{"id":177299,"date":"2023-05-09T11:24:26","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T21:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=177299"},"modified":"2023-05-09T11:24:26","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T21:24:26","slug":"hilo-mens-golf-takes-top-pacwest-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2023\/05\/09\/hilo-mens-golf-takes-top-pacwest-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> Hilo men’s golf takes top PacWest<\/abbr> awards"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

\"U<\/p>\n

Members of the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Hilo men\u2019s golf<\/a> team were honored with top PacWest<\/abbr> Conference awards for the 2023 season. Andrew Otani was named PacWest<\/abbr> Golfer of the Year, Junsu Im was selected as Freshman of the Year and Coach Earl Tamiya won Coach of the Year. The awards were voted on by the PacWest<\/abbr> Conference coaches.<\/p>\n

UH<\/abbr> Hilo finished third in the 21-team NCAA<\/abbr> West Region Spring Preview, which was held April 10–11 in Rohnert Park, California. They then carried that momentum into the PacWest<\/abbr> Championships held April 17–19 in Arizona, where they led from start to finish and claimed the banner by 10 strokes.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons for that strong finish was Otani. The fifth year senior, who began his career by winning the PacWest<\/abbr> Freshman of the Year award in 2019<\/a>, shared the 2023 medalist award with Im. He rode rounds of 69-73-75 to finish at +1 for the tournament. He was consistent throughout the three days and had eight birdies.<\/p>\n

Im, a freshman, had a similar story. Finishing at +1 as well, he turned in scorecards of 71-71-75. He had 10 birdies during the tournament.<\/p>\n

Im and Otani are the first Vulcans to win medalist honors since 2011. They are also part of the All-PacWest<\/abbr> First Team, along with Keith Ng. Dustin Franko also earned a spot on the second team.<\/p>\n

Veteran coach Earl Tamiya has been the coach of the Vulcans since 1991. A beloved leader, Tamiya coached his team through a slow start this season, to peak at the right time to win their first conference championship since 2014.<\/p>\n

The Vulcans will now advance to the NCAA<\/abbr> West Region tournament, May 11–13 in Rohnert Park, California. The top three teams from the West Regional will advance to the NCAA<\/abbr> Championships in Warren, Ohio, May 22–26.<\/p>\n

Read more at hiloathletics.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Otani, Junsu Im and Coach Earl Tamiya were honored with 2023 PacWest<\/abbr> men\u2019s golf awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1362],"tags":[58,142,598,1537,660,714,14,151],"class_list":["post-177299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","tag-athletics","tag-award","tag-faculty-recognition","tag-golf","tag-student-recognition","tag-student-athlete","tag-uh-hilo","tag-hilo-athletics","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177326,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177299\/revisions\/177326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}