MCC Golf in danger of forfeiting season.
Mesa Community College [MCC] is in danger of not being able to have one of their sports participate in this upcoming season.
Women’s golf is facing the possibility of not being able to have a season this year due to a lack of recruits coming to MCC. To field a team in golf it requires four student athletes and MCC currently has only three.
MCC Athletic Director John Mulhern believes it would be a shame for a program with such a rich history like women’s golf to not be able to participate.
“We have something like an 88-string tournament victory thing going but we don’t even have a full team right now,” said Mulhern.
It’s not for a lack of trying however, Mesa was heading into the season with a full team of six but National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes [NAIA] recruited three of them away from us by offering a full ride scholarship.
Mesa is not the only one losing recruits as South Mountain has also lost three to NAIA schools.
“I talked to our golf coach [Guerrero] and some of the golf participation in high school locally has been down for women’s golf,” said Mulhern.
This has likely had a bit of a ripple effect on larger four-year schools looking into the talent pool community colleges would usually recruit from.
“They are taking student athletes that may not be able to compete at that level but are being recruited to NAIA just to fill their scholarships, said Mulhern.
A NAIA program can offer up to 15 student athletes a full ride scholarship to a four-year program. That is just something that is hard to compete with if you’re a community college, and looking elsewhere isn’t an option as there is no out of state scholarships allowed.
This is not only a problem MCC is facing as South Mountain currently has zero athletes on their rosters and most all other programs within division are riding that line of having just enough student athletes to field a team.
Coach Guerrero has tried finding local talent other ways but with no luck so far. The program is still hopeful that they can still find their last recruit to join the team and have a great season.
