The Ferris men’s golf team enters the 2010 spring sea­son ranked No. 15 in the nation after win­ning three of five events dur­ing the fall.

Bulldog head coach Mike Mignano, in his third year with the team, said this is the most tal­ented team Ferris has ever had. The team fin­ished eighth at the NCAA-II Men’s Golf Championships a sea­son ago and is look­ing to crack the top five this season.

The Bulldogs are geared up to make another run at a national title. Mignano said every­thing the team does each day is based on the goal of win­ning a national championship.

“I think in gen­eral top five is good, but the guys won’t be happy unless they win it,” said Mignano.

Ferris never fin­ished out­side the top five in any event dur­ing the fall part of the sea­son. The Bulldogs’ worst result was at the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championships where they fin­ished tied for fourth.

The team kicks off its spring part of the sea­son with the UC-San Diego Southern California Intercollegiate Tournament in Mission Viejo, Calif. March 22–23. Mignano said the 12-team field con­sists of six of the top 20 teams from nation­als last year, includ­ing 2009 national cham­pion Sonoma State (Calif.).

“Obviously we’re going out there with the goal of win­ning, but more impor­tantly we want to kind of see where we are at in the mix,” said Mignano.

The ros­ter is lit­tered with tal­ent and expe­ri­ence as the team sports four seniors, five juniors, and four sopho­mores. The team is led by seniors Kurt Valley and Eric Lilleboe. Senior Craig Burrows and juniors Joe Brown and Garrett Simons also had one or more top ten indi­vid­ual fin­ishes dur­ing the fall sea­son for the Bulldogs.

“Kurt Valley is with­out a doubt the hard­est work­ing guy on our team,” said Mignano. “He’s our cap­tain, he’s our leader and he def­i­nitely sets an exam­ple for every­body else.”

The Bulldogs will be hit­ting the road early in the sea­son as the first four tour­na­ments of the spring will be played in California, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Lilleboe said the team is very deep and expects they will be in con­tention for a national title in May.

“Getting off to a good start early def­i­nitely helps us with con­fi­dence, but we would much rather end the year hot at region­als and nation­als,” said Lilleboe. n