Spring Recap: Youth Movement Leads Wheeling Men’s Golf in to Bright Future

Wheeling, W. Va. – There was a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Wheeling University Men’s Golf team entering the spring 2025 portion of their schedule. The team was under new leadership and featured a roster considering entirely of freshmen as they took on a four-tournament spring schedule. However, the young Cardinals took to the course and played strong throughout the spring to set them up for success as they head into the offseason.

On February 6^th, 2025, the Wheeling Athletics Department announced that Caleb Lee would take over as the new Head Men’s Golf Coach. He inherited a young team and came in with the goal of helping everyone improve their overall game this spring. A month and a half later, the team would take the course for the first time at the 2025 Mountain East Conference (MEC) Spring Classic, facing off against some of the best on the conference. After a slow start, the Cardinals were able to knock 25 strokes off their day one score and finished shooting a 628 across the two rounds of competition. That would be the team’s highest event score of the spring, and they would bounce back with a strong showing at the West Liberty Invitational. They would shoot a Spring best 602 at the event and rounded out the season with a 608 at the NCAA Atlantic East Preview.

Leading the way throughout the spring season was freshman Sean Dobson, who had an average round score of 78.1 across six rounds played. He was the Cardinal’s leading golfer in every event, with his best showing coming during the West Liberty Invitational. He would set his PR, shooting a 139 across the two day event to finish fourth overall and a total of three under par for the event. He would come out strong in round one, putting up a 70, but it would be his work on round two that helped him set his PR. He would shoot a 69 over the final 18 holes, hitting five birdies in the process. Dobson would shoot a 79 or better in three of the six rounds he played and never shot higher than an 84 in any round. He looks to continue that leadership into the fall as he looks to build off his spring experience.

The Cardinals also saw a strong spring from Lodin Femoen, after gaining a lot of experience with the Cardinals during the fall season. He was the only Cardinal freshman to appear in all 14 contests for the team, and finished with an average round score of. 81.2 over those14 rounds. Like a lot of his teammates, Femoen’s top performance would come at West Liberty, where he shot a 154 across the two rounds. He would set his PR when he shot a 74 in the first round, marking the first and only time he shot a sub 79 score on the season. Several other Cardinal freshmen stepped up throughout the spring with Lorenzo Lupi, Vladimir Zhang, and Caleb Minson all getting experience in the spring. They look to use that experience as they build a strong core for the program moving forward.

The Wheeling University Men’s Golf team now heads into the offseason as they look to continue building towards 2025-2026.