By Joe Scalzo
scalzo@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
Since Youngstown State joined the Horizon League a decade ago, two teams have performed better than the rest: women’s track and women’s golf.
“We have a lot of pride,” said women’s golf coach Roseann Schwartz. “If you don’t let them know they’re pretty good, they’re not going to build that confidence.
“We always tell them how proud the athletic department is of this team.”
The Penguins won the first league tournament in 2003 and added another trophy in 2009. They should be in the mix for another title this weekend when they travel to Florida for the league championships at Mission Inn Resort.
“If we play in the championship the way we’ve been playing — and we have been playing well — we should do a good job,” said Schwartz, who expects to battle Butler and Detroit for the top spot. “When my No. 1 and No. 2 players are playing the kind of golf they can play, they can be one or two anywhere, not just here.”
Junior Samantha Formeck won this event two years ago and has been the league’s golfer of the year each of the last two seasons. Senior Katie Rogner (Warren JFK), YSU’s female athlete of the year last year, is also capable of earning medalist honors.
Both are honors students in challenging majors, with Rogner ready to earn her engineering degree and Formeck set to leave school a year early to attend pharmacy school.
“They’ve been so good, they really have,” Schwartz said. “They’ve worked so hard and they deserve all the credit they’ve gotten.”
YSU’s No. 3, sophomore Sarah Heimlich, has improved by eight shots in the past year and should be even better next year, Schwartz said.
“I don’t think she’s peaked yet,” she said. “I think she’ll move up into one of the two top spots next year.”
Women’s track (seven combined league titles in indoor and outdoor competition) is the only other YSU sport to win more than one league title, so the golf team is in lofty company.
If Penguin freshmen Angela Molaskey (Poland) and Sarah Scheidmantel can step up this weekend, Schwartz likes her chances.
“Whoever starts putting is going to win,” Schwartz said. “That’s what it always comes down to.”
The men’s team, meanwhile, enters this weekend’s tournament as a bit of a dark horse. The Penguins have finished in the top half of their last three tournaments — the only times they’ve done so in 10 tournaments tracing back to last fall — and Coach Tony Joy thinks his team has as good a chance as anybody.
“Now, I might not be this optimistic if you talk to me on Sunday,” he said, chuckling. “Cleveland State looks like the strongest team but the league is pretty open.
“We’re going to Orlando feeling we’ve got as good a chance as anybody. From top to bottom, we’re as solid as anybody.”
The Penguins lost last year’s Horizon League champion, Ryan Stocke, to graduation. Senior Spenser Sulzener (the team’s lone senior) and junior Joe Santisi (who missed the fall season) finished second to Stocke in eight events last season, including the league meet.
Juniors Michael Lower and Anthony Conn and freshman Mark Olbrych give YSU some solid depth from 1-5.
“We’re dangerous if everyone plays well,” said Joy, who is in his 27th year with the Penguins. “I don’t feel like the gun’s not loaded.
“We’ve got some bullets and we’re going down there and we plan to be competitive.”
