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A great start to the 2025-26 season has the Hillsdale College men’s golf team residing in a rare spot in the first set of national and regional polls released by Scoreboard on Wednesday.
The Chargers are ranked 25th in NCAA Division II as a team and third in the Midwest Region in the Scoreboard National Collegiate Golf Rankings, the program’s highest ranking nationally and in the region since the Scoreboard poll was first brought into existence three years, and the second-best national ranking at the NCAA DII level since the program was restarted in 2014.
Only a ranking of 18th in the first Golfstat.com poll of the 2020-21 season in November 2020 surpasses the Chargers’ current mark as a national ranking, and that squad is an encouraging comparison for Hillsdale, as the 2020-21 team reached the NCAA Super Regional round and posted the Chargers’ best-ever finish in a NCAA Super Regional event as a team. This year’s squad, already following that path through four events this season, will look to match and surpass those achievements in the spring portion of the 2025-26 campaign.
Hillsdale’s impressive team ranking is thanks in part to an impressive individual performance, one that’s unprecedented so far in the history of the Chargers men’s golf program. Junior Robert Thompson currently ranks third in the nation at the NCAA DII level in the Scoreboard National Collegiate Golf Rankings after a torrid start that’s included two medalist honors, a runner-up finish in a playoff, and four top 10 finishes in four events this season. For the campaign, Thompson is currently 26-under par in 12 rounds of golf.
No Chargers player has come close to Thompson’s national ranking since Hillsdale moved to NCAA Division II in 1998. The strong start gives Thompson a shot to become the Chargers’ first All-American in golf since John Auseon was named an NAIA All-American in 1962 if he can sustain his current level of play through the spring season.
Hillsdale wraps up the fall portion of its schedule this coming Monday and Tuesday, traveling to Farmington, Pennsylvania for the Nemacolin Intercollegiate. The nine-team event includes one of the only two squads in the Midwest Region ranked ahead of the Chargers, Grand Valley State, as well as top G-MAC competitors Findlay and Tiffin.
Photo Courtesy of Findlay Athletics
