Hey Illini fans,

Everyone is back on campus and looking forward to getting the spring semester off to a great start. Overall, we had a good fall on the course and in the classroom, winning two tournaments while maintaining a 3.2 GPA as a team. Both of these areas are signs of the hard work we all put in on a daily basis to improve, and they are important to our success and reputation as a program. Moving forward, we look to build on the solid momentum we created throughout the fall and excel in our studies and our tournaments this spring.

Over break, many of the guys were able to travel to many different places and compete in a few tournaments too. Luke Guthrie and Zach Barlow went to Florida and competed in the Dixie Am. Matt Hoffman got to spend the entire break in Florida playing and practicing with his family and competed in the New Year's Invitational. To those who know Matt, it will come as no surprise that he won the long drive competition for the fourth time in a row. Chris DeForest also got to go to Florida and met up with Luke to get some good practice in while he was there. Ross Frankenburg went to Hawaii and Florida, played a lot of golf and worked on his game quite a bit while enjoying the warm weather. Sam Jandel was down to Florida to get some good practice in. Clayton Parkhill was in San Diego and was able to play Torrey Pines over break. I spent a week of my break in Mexico with some of my family. The rest of the team as well as myself got some good practice in around our homes and took some time to be with our friends and families during the rest of the break.

Once everyone was back on campus, we came together and had a meeting to discuss our mission as a team and certain things we plan to do this semester that can help us be at our best. Also, we've established some goals for this spring and identified specific things we all can do to get better at what we do and accomplish those goals. Discussing these things is important as it helps to motivate each of us and bring our focus in together on common goals that we all want to achieve.

Since we have all been back, we've had some great practices together and have started to have little competitions amongst ourselves to stay sharp and prepare for the upcoming season. We're all very excited to get back into playing tournaments and competing against the nation's best, and building on the momentum we created in the fall. The Big Ten Match Play is less than a month away and we're all pretty pumped to get back down there and improve on our performance last year. As always, you can follow us on fightingillini.com!

Go Illini!