UAFS will begin its quest for the men's golf program's first region tournament championship on Thursday when the Lions begin play in the NCAA Division II South Central/West Region Tournament.
The tournament will be hosted by Dixie State University at The Ledges Golf Club in St. George, Utah, on Thursday-Saturday. It will be the Lions' second consecutive appearance in the South Central/West Region Tournament.
UAFS will be in a three-team grouping that includes Concordia University and the University of California-San Diego. That grouping will tee off on Hole 10 during Thursday's first round.
Senior
Jakeb Mikel will tee off at 7:30 a.m. (MDT), freshman
Robert Garcia will tee off at 7:40 a.m. (MDT), senior
Tucker Tovar will tee off at 7:50 a.m. (MDT), sophomore
Jeremy Bates will tee off at 8 a.m. (MDT) and sophomore
Parker Jennings will tee off at 8:10 a.m. (MDT).
Live scoring will be provided throughout the tournament, and for more tournament information, visit
Tournament Central on the Dixie State University athletics website.
"With it being our senior year, we wanted to give ourselves (seniors) and the team a chance to experience what we experienced last year at the region tournament," Mikel said. "We knew it wasn't going to be an easy road with the fall season we had, but we never gave up and fought hard this spring to make this trip a reality."
UAFS was one of 20 teams to receive a berth in the South Central/West Region Tournament field. The Lions, who finished fourth in the Heartland Conference Tournament, were ranked No. 9 in the 10-team South Central Region and are one of five conference teams to earn a spot in the tournament, joining No. 1 Oklahoma Christian, No. 2 St. Mary's, No. 8 St. Edward's and No. 10 Lubbock Christian.
It will be the third region tournament appearance in the school's NCAA Division II era. The Lions finished 14
th in the 2012 Midwest/South Central Region Tournament and last year finished 11
th in the South Central/West Region Tournament.
Region tournaments will be conducted at four regional sites with regional pairings as follows: Atlantic and East Central and Midwest South and Southeast South Central and West.
In all, 80 teams and 32 student-athletes competing as individuals were selected to participate in regional competition of the 2019 NCAA Division II Men's Golf Championships. At a minimum, the top three teams and the top two student-athletes not with a team from each regional will advance to the finals May 20-24 at The Resort at Glade Springs in Daniels, West Virginia.
The remaining eight team berths will be allocated based on the regions represented in the prior year's head-to-head medal play portion of the championships, with the maximum number of teams from a given region capped at seven. The finals will be hosted by the Mountain East Conference.
"We still have a lot of work to do in order to make it to the national tournament, but we have confidence and trust in our teammates that this can happen," Tovar said.
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