The GW golf team went into last weekend hoping to gain some ground in its region as well as in the Atlantic 10, but that didn’t happen.

At the James Madison University Invitational in Virginia last weekend, sophomore Bryan Derdenger carded a 12-over-par 225 (77-75-73) to tie for 20th. However, the team was plagued by inconsistency as the Colonials finished a disappointing 15th in the 18-team event.

Sophomore Thomas Blankvoort was the next Colonial finisher, finishing 67th, 12 strokes behind Derdenger. Blankvoort’s round-by-round scores of 82, 73 and 82 illustrated the team’s overall inconsistent play.

The Colonials were crippled by the losses of number-one player Tim Derdenger to the flu and regular starter Darren Ressler.

Losing two of our normal starting five certainly hurt us, Allen said. For Mike Goldman and Ryan Day, it was their first starts this year. They played well at times, but generally were not consistent enough to make up for the loss of Ressler and Derdenger.

The Colonials had no time to recover, staying in Virginia for the even more challenging Old Dominion University Invitational Monday and Tuesday.

Comprised of several national top-40 teams, the ODU tourney revealed the holes in the Colonials’ lineup.

I think we’re a lot better than we showed in these two tournaments, Allen said. But we can’t shoot in the 80s one round and in the 70s another round and hope to win. This was easily our worst weekend in a year and a half.

After the two tournaments the Colonials fell to approximately 16th in the region, and the team’s chances for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament in the spring decreased as well.

Hopefully we can play well in the spring, make up some ground, and either win the A-10 – which will be tough considering the quality of play in the tournament – or play well enough to get back on track and impress some people, Allen said.