Mid-Season Status: Central Michigan

By Andrew Sneddon

    Good signs from the fall fuel hopes heading into the 2026 spring season, as both the men’s and women’s golf teams at Central Michigan are looking to take more steps as they enter their respective spring seasons.

    Under fourth-year coach Kevin Jennings, the Chippewa men are coming off a fall season in which they set program 18-, 36- and 54-hole scoring records and, led by co-captains Keith Hunter and Philippe Yturralde set several individual program marks.

    Yturralde, who hails from La Mesa, Calif., set a program record for aggregate score when he fired a blistering 6-under par 64 in the Chippewas’ second tournament of the fall season, the Earl Yestingmeier Invitational at Delaware Country Club in Muncie, Ind.

    Yturralde’s 64 came between a first-round 68 and a final-round 71 which gave him a 7-under 203 total, which tied Hunter’s Chippewa record for score in relation to par which he set just 11 days earlier at the season-opening Joe Feaganes Invitational in Huntington, W. Va.

    Yturralde and Hunter (New Hamburg, Ont.) combined for three top-10 individual finishes in the Chippewas’ four fall stroke-play events.

    Sophomore Ella Zanatta (Hamilton, Ont.) continued her emergence as one of the top players in CMU women’s golf history as she posted three top-20 finishes in four fall stroke-play events. Zanatta posted the Chippewas’ best finish in three of those events and tied for the best finish in the fourth.

    Zanatta closed the fall with a T2 in the Bronco Fall Invitational, hosted by Western Michigan at The Moors in Portage. That followed her T7 with teammate Rachel Niskanen at the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Classic, in which the Chippewas posted a fourth-place finish, their best of the fall, in a nine-team field.

    The CMU lineup is chock full of Michigan natives, including No. 2 player Rachel Niskanen (Negaunee) and lineup regulars Lauren Davis (Coopersville), Zoe Dull (Spring Lake) and Brooke Morris (Canton).