UW Trio Takes Different Roads To NCAA Regional Opportunity
May 17, 2026 | Men's Golf
SEATTLE – One is a steady, reliable veteran. Another is a never-give-up fifth-year guy. Still another is someone who saw an opportunity – and jumped at it.
Individually, their golfing pathways to the University of Washington couldn't have been more diverse. But for three days this week, all of those pathways will lead Finn Koelle, Jacob Goode and Emil Herstad to Oregon and the Trysting Tree Golf Club.
It is on that course where they will tee off on Monday in the NCAA Corvallis Regional. The 54-hole tournament continues through Wednesday. The goal for all of them is very straight-forward: Be the one guy among the 75 in the tournament who plays well enough over the course of those three days to earn the region's sole individual qualifying spot for the NCAA nationals.
The first round begins at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. Herstad starts at 9:42 a.m. Koelle and Goode are both part of the 9:53 a.m. threesome.
"It will be great competitive experience for the guys also and another chance to test their skills against the best college players in the country," Huskies coach Alan Murray said in a UW news story when the selections were announced on May 6. "We look forward to getting down there and see if one of the guys can advance. It's nice to see the guys get rewarded for a solid season individually."
The tournament features 13 teams of five players each (the Huskies just missed being one of those teams) and 10 individuals. The top five placing teams will make the national tournament. The lowest scoring individual who is not on one of those five teams also will be invited.
"Historically, if you look at regional sites you probably have to finish in the top 5 (individually) – and even that might not be good enough, so you have to play pretty well," Murray said.
Among the 10 individual qualifiers, UW's three-man contingent is tied with San Jose State as the largest.
"Three guys going to regionals – we're ready for it," said Koelle, a junior who is coming off a second-place finish at the Big Ten Championships. "Hopefully, one of us pulls out the spot and goes to nationals."
Added Herstad, a freshman from Norway who joined the Huskies in January, "It's unfortunate that the team didn't make it, but at least we kind of get to be a little team going down there and try to compete. We're rooting for each other. It's nice to have two teammates down there helping you."
One of those teammates is Goode, a fifth-year student who's playing his first season of college golf. He knows it'll take three nearly-perfect rounds to squeeze into that individual qualifying spot..
"You have to be on it all the time at this level," he said. "It's a unique opportunity for all three of us to punch our ticket to nationals. Hopefully, (one of us) will do that."
KOELLE: RIGHT AT HOME ATOP HUSKY LEADERBOARD
Ever since arriving on Montlake from his native Sulzfeld, Germany, in 2023, Finn Koelle has been the kind of athlete any coach in any sport loves having on the team: a "steady-Eddy": type who is going to go out and deliver what's expected of him, and sometimes even more.
"He has played virtually every tournament for us since he got here," Murray said. "He's a great ball striker and his long game is phenomenal. His short game is the area where he can improve, but he's working hard on that and he is improving. He has been on a solid track and just needs to keep doing what he's doing."
What the 21-year-old Koelle has been doing this year is setting the pace for the Huskies. Between last fall and this spring, he played in all 11 tournaments on the schedule and has been their top guy five times, most recently on May 1-3 in the Big Tens at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club just outside of Portland. (During his three years, he has been Washington's leader or co-leader in 12 tournaments.)
Koelle came into the final round six shots off the lead and four shots out of second place at Big Tens. He was holding his own through the first five holes, then got hot.
"I just played great under pressure," he said. "I felt awesome. I was 3-over-par through five, then came back and made eight birdies through the final 13 holes. (That included Nos. 16, 17 and 18.)
His final-round 66 and three-round total of 205 – both lows for the year – were enough to lift him into sole possession of second place. That made him the 12th Husky all-time to grab a conference tournament runner-up spot – although he wasn't immediately aware that he had pulled it off.
"I just went in there and tried to play as well as possible," he said. "Finishing second was great – I didn't even know I'd finished second until about 15 minutes after."
Had he wanted to, Koelle could have been a tennis player, as he did that sport and golf while growing up in Germany, and also played some soccer. ("In Germany, you have to play soccer," he said with a grin.) Around age 10, he decided to focus on golf.
"I knew I wanted to turn pro in one of those two sports," he said. "At that point, it was like, 'OK, which sport is the one where I can earn money a little easier? In tennis, you have to win tournaments. In golf, you can finish 15th and still earn money. That was my reasoning when I was growing up."
Koelle has Washington's second-lowest scoring average at 72.18. (It was a team-leading 72.22 last year as a sophomore.) He has had 12 rounds under par, seven rounds in the 60s and a pair of top-10 finishes, tying for seventh at the Southern Highlands Collegiate on March 1-3 in Las Vegas, along with his runner-up spot at the Big Tens.
He points to his putting as a big reason for all of that.
"I'm making a lot more and avoiding three-putts – that's huge," he said. "It's definitely something you work on every day, and it's nice to see that the work is paying off."
It also plays off with his studies as a psychology major and business minor. Koelle was named to last year's Big Ten Spring All-Academic team.
"It's great to kind of set the standard on the course and in the classroom," he said. "I have the most experience on the team, so I can give something back."
GOODE "LATE BLOOMER" BLOSSOMS IN BIG TOURNEYS
Jacob Goode was in the right place. But as the Huskies headed into the 2024-25 golf season, it turned out not to be the right time for him.
One year later, it was the right time, and Goode – now in his fifth year at Washington and taking master's courses after having already completed his undergrad degree in political science -- finally got to take his first swing in a purple UW shirt.
"I knew there was an opportunity for it, and I wanted it, no matter how long it took," he said.
Describing himself as "kind of a late bloomer" in golf, the 22-year-old San Francisco native said he was "just never really recruited out of high school." So he enrolled at UW to focus on his academic pursuits.
But he still loved playing the game and competing at a high level. Last summer, he won the California Amateur by a decisive 8-and-6 margin in the 36-hole final. That earned him a spot in the U.S. Amateur, which just happened to be taking place at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. Good also won the 2024 Silverado Amateur in Napa, California by five shots over 54 holes.
In addition, he has played in U.S. Open local qualifiers the past two summers, tying for seventh last year and tying for 19th in 2024.
"Winning the California Amateur was a great accomplishment for him," Huskies coach Murray said. "You look at the names on that trophy, and that's not easy to do."
But even more than all of those things, Goode wanted to play for the Huskies. He performed well enough in a tryout and Murray said he wanted to add him to the 2024-25 team, but ultimately was unable to do so because of roster limits.
Undaunted, Goode kept playing, turning his attention toward his highly successful results in the amateur events.
"I knew my golf days weren't done. If I didn't play in college, I would still have the opportunity to play competitively during the summer," he said. "I wanted to stay and play for my fifth year here, so it ended up working out."
Ended up working out – and then some.
Goode has competed in 10 of this season's 11 tournaments. He led the Huskies and made the overall top 10 at both the Amer Ari Invitational on Feb. 5-7 in Hawaii (tied for fifth) and at The Goodwin on March 26-28 at Stanford (tied for eighth). His 199 total at the Amer Ari and second-round 64 at The Goodwin are both season-lows for the Huskies.
In three other tournaments, he was second for Washington and among the top 20 overall. Some late-season tourneys didn't go as well as Goode would have liked, including the Big Tens, where he was 58th.
"I've been a little bit of chasing my tail around in the spring," said Goode, whose 72.4 scoring average is third-best on the team. "But when I feel like I stop chasing, then good things happen. I feel like I've played decently well in the spring."
That includes qualifying for this week's NCAA Regionals.
"We were able to have him (on the team) this year, which was exciting," Murray said. "He has come in, has a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of passion for the game, which is great. It's awesome for him that he has earned a postseason berth."
HERSTAD: QUICKLY FITTING IN WITH HUSKIES
Back during his elementary school days in Nittedal, Norway, Emil Herstad turned out for track and remembers being "quite a fast runner, kind of a sprinter."
Maybe his brief exposure to that sport came in handy. Because after arriving at Washington in January to begin his career as a college golfer …
… he pretty much had to hit the ground running.
"Originally, I thought about starting (next) fall. Coach (Murray) contacted me. He had space on the team and asked me if it all worked out, would that be something I was interested in," Herstad said. "I said yes. If I was going to start college in the fall anyway, I thought it was cool to jump right into it and get to play this spring."
The 19-year-old Herstad's UW debut came at the Southwestern Invitational on Jan. 26-28 in Westlake Village, California – and he made quite a first impression, leading the Huskies with 1-under-par 209 for 54 holes and tying for sixth place overall.
"I didn't really know what to expect in terms of my first college event and everything," Herstad said. "My game kind of clicked on an entirely new course than what I'm used to. I'm happy with the way I handled that. It was really fun in my first-ever college event."
Even happier with the way Herstad handled it was Washington coach Murray, who since then has seen him finish No. 2 for the team in three straight tournaments, including a tie for ninth at the Big Ten Championships earlier this month.
"I think it's hard to start here in January. Normally, guys come in on September 1 – that's the first day of practice," Murray said. "The advantage of being a quarter school is we have 3½ weeks of practice with no school (classes typically start toward the end of that month). So it's just golf when you arrive, and for new guys, that's kind of nice.
"Emil arrived in January, school had started, practices were going on, and as you know here in the Northwest, it gets dark early," Murray added. "The fact that Emil was able to come in and handle all that and finish sixth in his first tournament, he played really well. … On top of that, he has moved 4,000 miles from home, so add that on, and he has done as well as he could do."
After his initial contact with Murray last October, Herstad was still thinking that he would be staying on the other side of the Atlantic for a while longer.
"I was back home trying to map out all the tournaments I was going to play in Europe," said Herstad, who leads the team with his 71.4 scoring average. "It was kind of sudden. I had to make a decision to stay home until next fall or jump into it. I decided to jump right into it. I came here on a visit and the place was really great."
One particular selling point for Herstad was the caliber of Washington's competition calendar.
"I liked the coach, I liked the facilities, but the schedule is really attractive," he said. "We play a great schedule with better tournaments than I would have played if I had stayed back home. I get to play with a lot of great college golfers all over the place."
That certainly will be the case this week in Corvallis, and that group of great college golfers will include Koelle and Goode.
"It's really nice to have two older teammates to kind of ask about things. They get to share some experience with you and it helps a lot," he said. "I'm looking forward to regionals. I know that my game is in a good-enough spot where I can play really well. I just have to go and execute it."
Individually, their golfing pathways to the University of Washington couldn't have been more diverse. But for three days this week, all of those pathways will lead Finn Koelle, Jacob Goode and Emil Herstad to Oregon and the Trysting Tree Golf Club.
It is on that course where they will tee off on Monday in the NCAA Corvallis Regional. The 54-hole tournament continues through Wednesday. The goal for all of them is very straight-forward: Be the one guy among the 75 in the tournament who plays well enough over the course of those three days to earn the region's sole individual qualifying spot for the NCAA nationals.
The first round begins at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. Herstad starts at 9:42 a.m. Koelle and Goode are both part of the 9:53 a.m. threesome.
"It will be great competitive experience for the guys also and another chance to test their skills against the best college players in the country," Huskies coach Alan Murray said in a UW news story when the selections were announced on May 6. "We look forward to getting down there and see if one of the guys can advance. It's nice to see the guys get rewarded for a solid season individually."
The tournament features 13 teams of five players each (the Huskies just missed being one of those teams) and 10 individuals. The top five placing teams will make the national tournament. The lowest scoring individual who is not on one of those five teams also will be invited.
"Historically, if you look at regional sites you probably have to finish in the top 5 (individually) – and even that might not be good enough, so you have to play pretty well," Murray said.
Among the 10 individual qualifiers, UW's three-man contingent is tied with San Jose State as the largest.
"Three guys going to regionals – we're ready for it," said Koelle, a junior who is coming off a second-place finish at the Big Ten Championships. "Hopefully, one of us pulls out the spot and goes to nationals."
Added Herstad, a freshman from Norway who joined the Huskies in January, "It's unfortunate that the team didn't make it, but at least we kind of get to be a little team going down there and try to compete. We're rooting for each other. It's nice to have two teammates down there helping you."
One of those teammates is Goode, a fifth-year student who's playing his first season of college golf. He knows it'll take three nearly-perfect rounds to squeeze into that individual qualifying spot..
"You have to be on it all the time at this level," he said. "It's a unique opportunity for all three of us to punch our ticket to nationals. Hopefully, (one of us) will do that."
KOELLE: RIGHT AT HOME ATOP HUSKY LEADERBOARD
Ever since arriving on Montlake from his native Sulzfeld, Germany, in 2023, Finn Koelle has been the kind of athlete any coach in any sport loves having on the team: a "steady-Eddy": type who is going to go out and deliver what's expected of him, and sometimes even more.
"He has played virtually every tournament for us since he got here," Murray said. "He's a great ball striker and his long game is phenomenal. His short game is the area where he can improve, but he's working hard on that and he is improving. He has been on a solid track and just needs to keep doing what he's doing."
What the 21-year-old Koelle has been doing this year is setting the pace for the Huskies. Between last fall and this spring, he played in all 11 tournaments on the schedule and has been their top guy five times, most recently on May 1-3 in the Big Tens at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club just outside of Portland. (During his three years, he has been Washington's leader or co-leader in 12 tournaments.)
Koelle came into the final round six shots off the lead and four shots out of second place at Big Tens. He was holding his own through the first five holes, then got hot.
"I just played great under pressure," he said. "I felt awesome. I was 3-over-par through five, then came back and made eight birdies through the final 13 holes. (That included Nos. 16, 17 and 18.)
His final-round 66 and three-round total of 205 – both lows for the year – were enough to lift him into sole possession of second place. That made him the 12th Husky all-time to grab a conference tournament runner-up spot – although he wasn't immediately aware that he had pulled it off.
"I just went in there and tried to play as well as possible," he said. "Finishing second was great – I didn't even know I'd finished second until about 15 minutes after."
Had he wanted to, Koelle could have been a tennis player, as he did that sport and golf while growing up in Germany, and also played some soccer. ("In Germany, you have to play soccer," he said with a grin.) Around age 10, he decided to focus on golf.
"I knew I wanted to turn pro in one of those two sports," he said. "At that point, it was like, 'OK, which sport is the one where I can earn money a little easier? In tennis, you have to win tournaments. In golf, you can finish 15th and still earn money. That was my reasoning when I was growing up."
Koelle has Washington's second-lowest scoring average at 72.18. (It was a team-leading 72.22 last year as a sophomore.) He has had 12 rounds under par, seven rounds in the 60s and a pair of top-10 finishes, tying for seventh at the Southern Highlands Collegiate on March 1-3 in Las Vegas, along with his runner-up spot at the Big Tens.
He points to his putting as a big reason for all of that.
"I'm making a lot more and avoiding three-putts – that's huge," he said. "It's definitely something you work on every day, and it's nice to see that the work is paying off."
It also plays off with his studies as a psychology major and business minor. Koelle was named to last year's Big Ten Spring All-Academic team.
"It's great to kind of set the standard on the course and in the classroom," he said. "I have the most experience on the team, so I can give something back."
GOODE "LATE BLOOMER" BLOSSOMS IN BIG TOURNEYS
Jacob Goode was in the right place. But as the Huskies headed into the 2024-25 golf season, it turned out not to be the right time for him.
One year later, it was the right time, and Goode – now in his fifth year at Washington and taking master's courses after having already completed his undergrad degree in political science -- finally got to take his first swing in a purple UW shirt.
"I knew there was an opportunity for it, and I wanted it, no matter how long it took," he said.
Describing himself as "kind of a late bloomer" in golf, the 22-year-old San Francisco native said he was "just never really recruited out of high school." So he enrolled at UW to focus on his academic pursuits.
But he still loved playing the game and competing at a high level. Last summer, he won the California Amateur by a decisive 8-and-6 margin in the 36-hole final. That earned him a spot in the U.S. Amateur, which just happened to be taking place at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. Good also won the 2024 Silverado Amateur in Napa, California by five shots over 54 holes.
In addition, he has played in U.S. Open local qualifiers the past two summers, tying for seventh last year and tying for 19th in 2024.
"Winning the California Amateur was a great accomplishment for him," Huskies coach Murray said. "You look at the names on that trophy, and that's not easy to do."
But even more than all of those things, Goode wanted to play for the Huskies. He performed well enough in a tryout and Murray said he wanted to add him to the 2024-25 team, but ultimately was unable to do so because of roster limits.
Undaunted, Goode kept playing, turning his attention toward his highly successful results in the amateur events.
"I knew my golf days weren't done. If I didn't play in college, I would still have the opportunity to play competitively during the summer," he said. "I wanted to stay and play for my fifth year here, so it ended up working out."
Ended up working out – and then some.
Goode has competed in 10 of this season's 11 tournaments. He led the Huskies and made the overall top 10 at both the Amer Ari Invitational on Feb. 5-7 in Hawaii (tied for fifth) and at The Goodwin on March 26-28 at Stanford (tied for eighth). His 199 total at the Amer Ari and second-round 64 at The Goodwin are both season-lows for the Huskies.
In three other tournaments, he was second for Washington and among the top 20 overall. Some late-season tourneys didn't go as well as Goode would have liked, including the Big Tens, where he was 58th.
"I've been a little bit of chasing my tail around in the spring," said Goode, whose 72.4 scoring average is third-best on the team. "But when I feel like I stop chasing, then good things happen. I feel like I've played decently well in the spring."
That includes qualifying for this week's NCAA Regionals.
"We were able to have him (on the team) this year, which was exciting," Murray said. "He has come in, has a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of passion for the game, which is great. It's awesome for him that he has earned a postseason berth."
HERSTAD: QUICKLY FITTING IN WITH HUSKIES
Back during his elementary school days in Nittedal, Norway, Emil Herstad turned out for track and remembers being "quite a fast runner, kind of a sprinter."
Maybe his brief exposure to that sport came in handy. Because after arriving at Washington in January to begin his career as a college golfer …
… he pretty much had to hit the ground running.
"Originally, I thought about starting (next) fall. Coach (Murray) contacted me. He had space on the team and asked me if it all worked out, would that be something I was interested in," Herstad said. "I said yes. If I was going to start college in the fall anyway, I thought it was cool to jump right into it and get to play this spring."
The 19-year-old Herstad's UW debut came at the Southwestern Invitational on Jan. 26-28 in Westlake Village, California – and he made quite a first impression, leading the Huskies with 1-under-par 209 for 54 holes and tying for sixth place overall.
"I didn't really know what to expect in terms of my first college event and everything," Herstad said. "My game kind of clicked on an entirely new course than what I'm used to. I'm happy with the way I handled that. It was really fun in my first-ever college event."
Even happier with the way Herstad handled it was Washington coach Murray, who since then has seen him finish No. 2 for the team in three straight tournaments, including a tie for ninth at the Big Ten Championships earlier this month.
"I think it's hard to start here in January. Normally, guys come in on September 1 – that's the first day of practice," Murray said. "The advantage of being a quarter school is we have 3½ weeks of practice with no school (classes typically start toward the end of that month). So it's just golf when you arrive, and for new guys, that's kind of nice.
"Emil arrived in January, school had started, practices were going on, and as you know here in the Northwest, it gets dark early," Murray added. "The fact that Emil was able to come in and handle all that and finish sixth in his first tournament, he played really well. … On top of that, he has moved 4,000 miles from home, so add that on, and he has done as well as he could do."
After his initial contact with Murray last October, Herstad was still thinking that he would be staying on the other side of the Atlantic for a while longer.
"I was back home trying to map out all the tournaments I was going to play in Europe," said Herstad, who leads the team with his 71.4 scoring average. "It was kind of sudden. I had to make a decision to stay home until next fall or jump into it. I decided to jump right into it. I came here on a visit and the place was really great."
One particular selling point for Herstad was the caliber of Washington's competition calendar.
"I liked the coach, I liked the facilities, but the schedule is really attractive," he said. "We play a great schedule with better tournaments than I would have played if I had stayed back home. I get to play with a lot of great college golfers all over the place."
That certainly will be the case this week in Corvallis, and that group of great college golfers will include Koelle and Goode.
"It's really nice to have two older teammates to kind of ask about things. They get to share some experience with you and it helps a lot," he said. "I'm looking forward to regionals. I know that my game is in a good-enough spot where I can play really well. I just have to go and execute it."
Players Mentioned
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Monday, October 13
2025 Go BIG! for Washington Day
Friday, February 28
UW Officially Joins the Big Ten
Thursday, August 01
2024 Husky Giving Day: Men's Golf
Thursday, March 07
