ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Wagner men's golf is prepped and ready for its 2026 NEC Championship berth, set to be played in Ellicott City, Maryland at the Turf Valley Resort.
Results for the event will be posted here once it begins.
The Wagner Team
Wagner will travel with a group of six — five golfers will compete each day, with the lowest four scores counting, and the sixth will be an alternate. The team will be represented by freshman Guillermo Ochoa Valencia, freshman Cooper Joyce, senior Alavid Melo Iturralde, senior Renato Gerena, sophomore Daniel Cassidy and sophomore Emilio Zapiain.
Championship Format
Beginning Friday, April 24, the 2026 NEC Championship will be played at Ellicott City, Maryland's Turf Valley Resort, which boasts a pair of 18-hole courses. Eleven teams will compete alongside the Seahawks — Binghamton, Chicago State, Howard, Le Moyne, LIU, UMES, Mercyhurst, New Haven, NC Central and Saint Francis U.
The championship, played across three days, will be a 54-hole event. Each team's score will be calculated by combining the team's four lowest scored from each day. The top ten finishers in the event will be named to the 2026 All-NEC team.
Turf Valley Resort's courses are The Original Course, described as a more traditional style course that will reward strong shots. The Hialeah Course, the second of the pair, rewards strong shooting with tighter fairways and dramatic elevation changes. A virtual, hole-by-hole tour of each course is available here.
The Season So Far
Wagner competed in four events in the fall of 2025, opening its 2025-2026 slate at the Columbia Autumn Invitational where the team finished 11th of 13, led by senior Renato Gerena's 216 score. From there, the Seahawks hosted Saint Peter's on Friday, October 3 for a dual match that saw Wagner take a 10-19 win.
A trip to the Bucknell Fall Invitational was the team's second tournament of the fall, with the Seahawks finishing 13th in a field of 19 teams. Gerena finished tenth individually at the event. The fall semester concluded with Wagner hosting the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Championship at the end of October, taking eighth place.
The spring slate began on March 21 at the two-day Carpetbagger Classic at the Worthington Manor Golf Club. The Seahawks finished tenth of 16 teams
Next up, the team traveled to Glen Cove, New York for LIU's Shark Invitational, a two-day event beginning Monday, April 13. The Seahawks finished 15th. Most recently, the team hosted La Salle on Staten Island at the La Tourette Golf Course on Friday, April 17. The two teams were unable to complete all 18 holes so no results were recorded.
2025 Championship Recap
Last season, the team competed in Williamsburg, Virginia at the Kingsmill Resort. It was a fifth-place finish for the Seahawks, posting a +40 score across three days playing the resort's River Course.
Then-freshman Emilio Zapiain led the way for Wagner, tying for 11th individually with a +7 performance where he posted six birdies and an eagle. Each member of Wagner team finished in the top 20. Three of Wagner's five players from last season's championship will return — Zapiain, Melo Iturralde and Cassidy.
Howard ultimately won the 2025 NEC Championship with an 860 team score, making a massive push on day three as the only team to shoot below 290 in the final round on a what was a very windy final day of competition. Above Wagner in fifth were LIU in second (862), FDU in third (869) and Le Moyne in fourth (891).
