Coming Sunday: ASU golf preview

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The picture tells all you really need to know.
Five Augusta State golfers, wearing their Sunday best, are standing on the South Lawn. Behind them, the White House rests.
This September visit is now but a frozen moment in time, a moment the Jaguars earned by winning their first NCAA Division I Championship in 2010. The team earned a trip to Washington, D.C., visiting sites like the Lincoln Memorial and World War II Memorial. Augusta State's players later ate cookies and sipped lemonade on the grounds of the White House before shaking hands with President Obama. It was a perfect day that wasn't quite complete..
Coach Josh Gregory, who helped build the Jaguars into a national power, remained home. His wife, Ashley, delivered James Baxley, three hours before the Jaguars embarked by plane to the nation's capital.
"I'd like to be able to go," Gregory said with a laugh. "But it was a special year with the (national championship) and the birth of our first child."
After Augusta State won its first national title a year ago, the team has designs on winning a second championship. The Jaguars, led by seniors Henrik Norlander, Mitch Krywulycz, Carter Newman and Olle Bengtsson and junior Patrick Reed, go for No. 2 when they open play Tuesday in the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek in Stillwater, Okla.
Should Augusta State bring home another title, Gregory knows what will potentially follow - a second celebration at the golf house, a second championship dinner with more than 1,000 people at Christenberry Fieldhouse and a second trip to the White House. All Augusta State has to do is break a long spell and become the first team to win consecutive national titles since Houston in 1984-85.
"Why not us?" Gregory asked. "Somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to break the streak.
"I can imagine the second one would be pretty cool, too. You've got to dream big."

Read more in Sunday's print editions of The Augusta Chronicle.

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