STORM LAKE, Iowa (March 5, 2026) - The Buena Vista men's golf team is nearing the start of its spring conference season, and the Beavers will have their eyes set on using it's strong veteran and experienced line-up to make a charge up the leaderboard when the A-R-C Championships roll around in late April.

Seventh-year head coach Joe Powell will have the luxury to lean on a veteran line-up that continues to make strides and become more consistent. The team comes into the spring with a great deal of momentum after a pair of runner-up team finishes to close out the fall schedule. One of those finishes came at the Wartburg Invite where the team posted a school record low final round of 285. Those 18 holes were aided by a 5-under 67 by senior Matthew Turpen which was the lowest individual single-round for the program in at least the last 32 years.

Turpen, who was an all-conference player as a freshman with a 10th place finish, is one of four seniors that make up the overall BVU roster this year, along with fellow seniors Kaleb Sander, Carson Krogulski, Mason Laven. Three of those individuals played a total of 10 rounds in the fall and had scoring averages at or below 80.0. Turpen was second with a 77.5 and had a pair of top-3 individual finishes. Laven is coming off a junior campaign where he had a scoring average just over 79.0 across 21 rounds.

Junior Gabe Kramer will also be in the mix as he currently holds a team-leading scoring average from the fall of 77.2 which includes nine rounds and one top-3 finish. Three other juniors - Justin Hanks, Nathan Hillman and Payton Greenwood will provide a great deal of depth for the team. All three players have scoring averages in the mid-80's from this fall and have been playing a good amount of competitive golf over their first two-and-a-half seasons. Powell also has a freshman, Ashton Richey, who enters the spring with six rounds of collegiate golf with the Beavers under his belt and has a solid scoring average of  82.0.

BVU is coming off a sixth-place finish at last spring's A-R-C Championships which was the program's highest placing since it was sixth back in 2012-13. It came out strong and fired a 309 and was tied for fifth after 18 holes.

The spring schedule officially gets underway for the team when it travels to Longview, Texas over spring break for the Pinecrest Invitational on March 8-10. It will then have two weeks off before it competes in the Graceland University Invite on March 27-28. The varsity squad will have two additional spring tournaments that lead up to the A-R-C Championships which take place on April 26-28 in Des Moines, Iowa, at Glen Oaks Golf & Country Club.