April 19, 2004

Jamaica, N.Y - The St. John's men's golf team was selected as the sixth seed for the 2004 BIG EAST Championship, to be played at Warren Golf Course in Notre Dame, Ind. on April 24-25. Three-time defending Champion Virginia Tech claimed the No. 1 seed, followed by Georgetown, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Boston College and St. John's who round out the field of six teams selected to compete.

The Red Storm is looking to win a BIG EAST record 10th team title and the program's first since 1989. St. John's has been knocking on the door recently, posting two runner-up finishes and one third place finish at the BIG EAST Championship in the past four years.

Despite the graduation of Andrew Svoboda, arguably the best golfer in school history, and a young team, the 2003-04 Red Storm hung tough throughout the entire season and with a consistent team effort qualified sixth for the 2004 BIG EAST Championship. St. John's placed in the top ten in seven of the eleven events they participated in this season. Highlighting the season was their first place finish at the Hofstra Invitational, St. John's first win of the season. The team also finished in the top-five at the Northwood Invitational where they placed fourth.

Individually, St. John's sophomore John Stoltz (Middletown, NY.) may be the golfer to carry the Red Storm in this years championship. Stoltz, who won the Hofstra Invitational individual title this year leads the Red Storm in stroke average (76.41), average strokes off the lead (5.7), top-10 (2), and top-20 (4) finishes. Two other young standouts that added to St. John's success this season were freshman Joe Yastrub (Lake Grove, NY.) and sophomore Brian McArdle (Huntington, NY.) Yastrub is tied with McArdle for the team led in rounds counted (22) and percentage of rounds counted (91.6%) and is second in stroke average (76.83) and average strokes off the lead (5.8)

Junior Ian Middleton (British Columbia, Canada) and sophomore Tom Travalja (Oradell, N.J.) will add some experience to the young St. John's team, both Middleton and Travalja are making their second career postseason appearances at the BIG EAST Championships.