After finishing the 2025-26 season with its best round of the year in the final round of the Missouri Valley Conference Championship, the Valparaiso University men's golf team will look to carry that momentum over to the new academic calendar with the 2026-2027 season set to get underway.
Longtime head coach Dave Gring will helm a roster that features three seniors, a junior, two sophomores and a freshman. The Beacons have announced their 2026-2027 schedule, which will begin on Sept. 8-9 at the ANF Fall Classic, hosted by the University of Iowa at Blue Top Ridge in Riverside, Iowa.
"This is always an exciting time of the year, with our players returning to campus, commencing team practices and workouts and starting our competitive season," Gring said. "It's been four months since our team competed in the MVC Championship, so the guys are ready to roll with the new school year and season. We added a new player in
Tyler Samaan, our incoming freshman, and our team returns six players from last year. We have a great core of players that finished this past spring season very strong, so we return to campus with great anticipation for this year!"
The season opener in Iowa begins a schedule that features six tournaments in the fall and seven in the spring. The fall journey continues with Rice's Bayou City Collegiate Classic (Sept. 21-22) at Westwood in Houston before the Badger Invitational, hosted by Wisconsin, takes place on Sept. 27-29 at University Ridge in Madison, Wis. The Badger Individuals Tournament (Sept. 27-28, Pleasant View GC) will run concurrently with the Badger Invitational for individuals not participating in the team event. Belmont will host the Kemper Lakes Invitational (Oct. 5-6 at Kemper Lakes GC in Kildeer, Ill.) before Drake's Zach Johnson Invitational (Oct. 19-20 at Glen Oaks CC in West Des Moines, Iowa) closes out the autumn docket for the Beacons.
Valpo will resume action with the Savannah Intercollegiate (Feb. 20-21, Club at Savannah Harbor, Savannah, Ga.) before the spring continues with Western Carolina's Peoples Golf Championship (Feb. 26-27, Sea Palms Resort, St. Simons Island, Ga.) and Appalachian State's Surf Club Invitational (March 8-9, Surf Golf & Beach Club, North Myrtle Beach, S.C.).
The Beacons' spring slate continues with the Mobile Bay Intercollegiate (March 29-30, RTJ Magnolia Grove Falls, Mobile, Ala.) and the Racer Intercollegiate (April 5-6, Paducah, Ky., CC of Paducah) before the Boilermaker Shootout (April 17, Kampen Cosler, West Lafayette, Ind.) will mark the final tune-up for the MVC Championship (April 25-27, Dalhousie, Cape Girardeau, Mo.).
Some of the team's tournaments will be return trips for the Beacons – the Bayou City Collegiate Classic (second straight year), Badger Invitational (second straight year), the Zach Johnson Invitational (fifth time but first since 2022), Savannah (sixth time but first since 2021), Peoples Golf Championship (second straight year) and Mobile Bay Intercollegiate (fourth straight year). The remaining events will be new to the schedule this year.
"I'm very excited about our schedule for this year, since we will play 13 tournaments, with six events this fall and seven in the spring," Gring said. "This is one of the most competitive schedules that we have ever had, playing in three Big-10 tournaments and three tournaments hosted by fellow Missouri Valley Conference teams. We will travel to 10 different states, including Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and more. Quality preparation for each tournament will be imperative, since eight of our 13 tournaments will have us playing golf courses that we didn't play last year. The team is thrilled to start our practices at Sand Creek Country Club soon."
