After some time away, Sault College is back on the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association golf circuit.
The opportunity comes after the new coaches presented an opportunity to the school that was tough to turn down.
“The two new coaches, Kyle Thibeault and Mike McMillan sent me a proposal and just wanted to know what it would take to get the program going,” said Sault College's Paul Orazietti, manager of athletics at the school. “When they brought their proposal to the college, what it included was the fact that the golf course (Crimson Ridge) was going to partner with us and in return for the partnership, our golfers were going to get to practice and compete at the golf course for free. They made a really compelling proposal to return to OCAA golf without having to absorb the usual costs of having to rent time on the course. That was a big part of it.”
“The other piece was really hard to refuse was that both of them are super passionate guys that have really strong backgrounds in golf,” Orazietti added. “That, combined with the cost factor, was really a no-brainer. We always wanted to run golf, but at the time we weren’t doing much in the way of recruiting and both these guys were really keen on doing some recruiting. Since then, Brent Pusch, who was the former coach at Lake Superior State for their golf program, is now teaching at Sault College and has joined the staff.”
Thibeault, who has been involved in golf locally helping out with the junior golf programs in the Sault, joins the program after competing with Olivet College from 2004 to 2007.
Meanwhile, McMillan was a two-sport athlete at American International College where he played hockey and golf. He was named AIC’s top golfer in 2006.
Pusch spent the 2019-20 season as an assistant coach at Lake State after some time away from the school. He was the head coach of Lake State’s men’s golf team from 2012 to 2016 and served the same role with the women’s team from 2014 to 2016.
The return of the sport to the school comes after taking a year off due to a myriad of reasons, but Orazietti did say that the school never wanted to fully step away from the sport.
“Until we can change the dynamic of how the team looks, we’ll put it on hiatus for a bit,” Orazietti said of the decision to take a year away from the sport. “It was never really the plan to get out of golf and this past year, we had budgeted for golf. It wasn’t that hard to get back into it. We just needed the right timing, the right economic plan, and the right coaches.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to some uncertainty recruiting wide for the school but Orazietti did say that the return of the program has generated interest from potential student-athletes.
“Due to current circumstances, it’s tapered off a bit because obviously students don’t know what the situations are going to be like in the fall but before the corona outbreak, we had a number of good contacts with kids that had committed to come,” Orazietti said. “The brand new simulator at Crimson Ridge was a huge part of that so our golfers know that they can golf year-round, which is great. We’re going to maximize our time on that simulator for sure. That’s a big part of it is our golfers know that they can get better twelve months of the year instead of just the short summer we have here in the Sault. We had two or three really good American kids who were interested in coming up. We had a bunch of kids from southern Ontario that have expressed a strong interest. We had a golf meeting (Thursday) afternoon and one of the things a lot of the kids from southern Ontario are asking is, ‘Do you play in the States at all?’ For us, our plan is to play two, three, or maybe even four invitational golf tournaments in Michigan. We’re going to play most of our golf in the U.S. and then when it gets to the provincial championships, that’s where we’ll play and then if we qualify for the Canadian championship.”
“It’s really helpful for us to play in northern Michigan and central Michigan,” Orazietti added.