CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL  |  LIVE SCORING  |  COACHES POLL

WALTHAM, Mass. – It's been five years since a Northeast-10 Conference men's golf team successfully defended their conference championship.

The Bentley University Falcons will look to change that trend during the coming days when the 2018 Northeast-10 Championships are contested at the En-joie Golf Club in Endicott, N.Y. The two-day event will get underway Sunday, Sept. 30.

Bentley, which has earn five conference titles since 2006, will have a lineup that includes three of the five players who helped coach Mickey Herron's team claim the 2017 championship: senior Chris Simione (Cheshire, Conn./Cheshire HS), junior Robert Falconer (Mechanicsburg, Pa./Cumberland Valley HS) and sophomore Tommy Ethier (Nashua, N.H./Bishop Guertin HS).

Falconer tied for fifth with a 70-77-147, Simione's 74-74-148 put him in a tie for eighth and Ethier shared 16th place with a 76-75-151.

Rounding out the Falcon quintet who'll be traveling to central New York for the championship are senior Doug Kulikowski (Pittsford, N.Y./Pittsford Sutherland HS) and sophomore Ellis Yoder (Fort Wayne, Ind./Homestead HS).

Thus far this fall, Bentley has finished third in the Franklin Pierce Invitational and first in last weekend's American International College Invitational.

Simione (73.0), Falconer (73.8) and Ethier (74.3) are all off to strong starts to the fall season with Ethier coming off a winning performance in the AIC Invitational. Yoder had a solid effort at AIC, 77-75-152) in his first action of the season, and Kulikowski's resume includes a third-place finish in the 2016 championships.

A pre-championship poll of conference coaches forecasts a closely-contested tournament. Four teams received first-place votes with Bentley topping the voting with three firsts and 72 points. Also expected to be in the hunt are Southern New Hampshire (2, 69), Le Moyne College (1, 64) and Franklin Pierce University (4, 62).

NORTHEAST-10 CONFERENCE PRE-CHAMPIONSHIP COACHES POLL