PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – A decade of building the Arkansas Tech men's golf program into a national powerhouse has culminated to this point in time as head coach Luke Calcatera has guided the Wonder Boys to the doorsteps of history. At 8 a.m. Central Time, he and his talented group of golfers will tee off from Hole No. 1 at the Par-72, 7,051-yard PGA National Champion Course playing for a National Championship.
 
Those that have followed the rise of the Wonder Boys' golf program are certainly not surprised and recent history on the national stage backs that up.
 
Including this year, the Wonder Boys, who are currently nationally-ranked No. 4 according to GolfStat, have appeared in five NCAA National Championship Tournaments with the most-recent four appearances coming in consecutive* years dating back to 2017. In each of those years, the Wonder Boys have made it through stroke play and advanced to the Elite Eight and competed in Medal Match Play.
 
In their first time in match play back in 2017, the Wonder Boys upset top-seeded Barry, 2-2-1 but narrowly fell to No.4-seed Lynn 3-2 in the semifinal match. The following two appearances saw the Wonder Boys be the No. 6-seed through stroke play and were upended in the quarterfinal round of match play.
 
This year, however, the Wonder Boys made it clear that they were a force to be reckoned with as they lead the field after the opening round of stroke play. After dropping to third on the team leaderboard after the second round, the Wonder Boys were paired with national No. 1-ranked West Florida and eventual stroke play champion UIndy.
 
Unfazed by that pairing, the Wonder Boys played exceptional in the final round and was six strokes better than West Florida to springboard past them and just a stoke off UIndy's third round, but the Greyhounds blistering second round 286 created enough separation.
 
Securing their highest finish ever through stroke play at the National Championships shouldn't come as any kind of surprise either when you consider what the Wonder Boys have done not just this year, but even going back to the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
 
Prior to the abrupt cancelation of the 2020 season, the Wonder Boys were rolling. In their fall season, they placed in the top-five in all five tournaments played in, winning the NCAA National Preview and finishing third among a field of 12 in which the Wonder Boys were the only non-DI team.
 
In the spring, the Wonder Boys appeared in just two tournaments and of course finished in the top-five of both of those. What ended up being their final tournament of the year, the Wonder Boys finished first at the Las Vegas Desert Classic that featured a stacked national field.
 
With eligibility waivers granted for spring sport athletes due to abrupt end of the 2019-2020 season, the Wonder Boys returned all but one player for the 2020-21 campaign with 2019 All-Americans Austin Gean and Shawn Tsai taking advantage of the extra year of eligibility and returning to the program for one more go at it.
 
Armed with a core of talented golfers back in the mix, Calcatera and the Wonder Boys got even better with additions of true freshmen standouts Santiago De La Fuente and Henry Frizzell. In their rookie collegiate seasons, De La Fuente has gone on to be the unanimous GAC Freshman of the Year while Frizzell was the individual medalist at the GAC Championships.
 
That mix of returners and newcomers was the recipe for what turned out to be one of the most dominant seasons ever by a Wonder Boys golf team.
 
Having not been able to play any tournaments in the fall due to lingering concerns of COVID-19 that resulted in the suspension of all sports through December 31, 2020, the Wonder Boys hit the links for the first time on February 8 at the Houston Classic.
 
Despite not having played competitive golf at the collegiate level in nearly a year, the Wonder Boys came out and made a solid debut finishing second. The next three tournaments put the Wonder Boys' dominance on full display as they won all three, the Rattler Invitational, the Natural State Classic and the Battle for the Belt by a combined 69 shots. Their lowest margin of victory during that stretch was 20 strokes.
 
The Wonder Boys then solidified themselves as the top team in the Central Region with top-five team finishes at the Broncho Invitational and the NCAA Central Region Preview. In their final regular season tournament, the Wonder Boys established themselves as national contenders once more with a tie for third-place finish at the nationally-stacked Argonaut Invitational. With 13 of the 15 teams in the field nationally-ranked at that time, the Wonder Boys were beat out by top-ranked West Florida and then No. 4-ranked Lincoln Memorial.
 
The momentum of that performance carried over for the Wonder Boys into the GAC Tournament as they cruised to a 13-stroke victory to claim their second-consecutive* league tournament title. The team's 14-under (850) 54-hole total was the second-lowest in GAC history.
 
Now at the regional tournament, a place that they have been to for the eighth-straight year, all under Calcatera, and 15^th overall. The Wonder Boys did what they had to do in order to advance for the National Championships and ended up finishing third. Running away with that regional was Central Missouri.
 
The Wonder Boys ultimately got the all-important last laugh at Nationals however, as they knocked off the Mules 3-2-0 in the quarterfinals of match play. That victory advanced the Wonder Boys to the semifinals against West Florida, a team that ended their season in the quarterfinal round in 2019, 5-0-0.
 
Throughout much of the season, the Argos were the top-ranked team in DII, but that mattered not to the Wonder Boys this time around. A day earlier, the Wonder Boys were paired with West Florida during the final round of stroke play and the Wonder Boys out-played the Argos and ended up six shots better at the end of the round.
 
That performance assuredly gave the Wonder Boys a ton of confidence heading into the semifinal match and it showed.
 
Until late in the match, the Wonder Boys were in position to return the favor to the Argos and sweep them 5-0-0, but West Florida would end up winning a match between Henry Frizzell and Jake DeZoort and tying another one between Francois Jacobs and Felipe Garces Garzon on the final hole.
 
Those results proved to be insignificant to the overall team result, however, as the Wonder Boys left no doubt in the other three matches.
 
In the match between Santiago De La Fuente and Carlos Marrero, De La Fuente broke a tie through 14 holes and surged to a three-stroke lead on No. 15 thanks to a three on the hole and a six by his counterpart. De La Fuente then gained another stroke on the next hole and held it through 17 holes before ending his match with a three-stroke margin.
 
Andre Jacobs' match with Alejandro Restrepo was closely-contested through the front-nine as they were tied on six of the nine holes. The largest advantage on the front-nine was one stroke gained by Restrepo on Hole No. 4 and held through Hole No. 6. Tied at the turn, A. Jacobs turned the march significantly in his favor as he grabbed a one-stroke lead on Hole No. 10. That held until No. 14 when A. Jacobs picked up two strokes. That was doubled on the next hole and grew as large as an eight-stroke advantage through 17 holes before A. Jacobs ended with a five-stroke victory.
 
The most lopsided match in the semifinals was the match that involved Austin Gean and Elias Haavisto. Similar to Andre's front-nine, Gean was tied with his opponent through nine holes. On the back-nine, however, Gean blew past his counterpart eventually coming away with a 10-stroke win. The difference in that match came on Hole No. 17 when Gean made par on the Par-3 hole. His opponent, however, was eight-over on the hole and swelled a two-shot lead for Gean to the double-digit margin.

In playing for a National Championship, the Wonder Boys hope to win their first national title in men's golf and secure the third national championship overall at Arkansas Tech.
 
(*NOTE – the 2020 season was not completed, and no conference or NCAA Spring Championships were held due to COVID-19)