Hall of Fame
If one player could be responsible for helping to turn a program around, then pencil in Billy Wingerd’s name for men’s golf. Once he arrived the Tigers’ tournament championships began piling up. During his four years on the squad, Towson captured six tournament titles and made two of the program’s four appearances in the NCAA Tournament at the time of his induction.
Billy’s arrival at Towson was very much fortuitous, the result of an illness that forced him home from a college in North Carolina.
“At the time I thought I wanted to get into the golf business so I picked Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C. because it had a golf management program,” Billy said. “But I got sick and wound up coming home because I didn’t feel good. I spent a month in the hospital and never went back to Methodist. A friend of mine and a Towson golfer, Chris Baloga (2001-05) came to see me and suggested I stay home and go to Towson. We wound up going from not so good my freshman year to real good very quickly once we got some better players. We had a pretty good run from there.”
Billy did a little recruiting of his own. He met Jeff Castle during a summer tournament. Things weren’t working out for Jeff at Arizona State so Billy suggested Jeff throw in with the Tigers. That gave Towson its best one-two punch of all time and helped vault the Tigers to the top of the leaderboards.
Billy became Towson’s first CAA Championship medalist and Player of the Year when he captured the individual conference title in 2004. He finished in the top 10 of the CAA Tournament each year including 10th as a freshman, third as a sophomore, first as junior and fourth as a senior when he was again named Player of the Year, sharing the honor with the teammate he helped to recruit, Jeff Castle. Billy is the only Towson golfer to earn first team All-CAA honors three times. He led the Tigers to consecutive NCAA tournaments in 2004 and 2005.
His best round as a college golfer, a 66 (-6) earned him medalist honors at the 2002 East Carolina Pirate Invitational. That score tied for the second best round by a Tiger golfer. His 54-hole rounds of 205, 206 and 207 ranked second, third and fourth all-time at Towson. In 2005 he became the first golfer to be named Athlete of the Year at Towson University. In 2010, along with Jeff Castle, he was named to the CAA’s prestigious 25th anniversary men’s golf team.
Billy, who is just the second golfer to be inducted into Towson’s Hall of Fame, gave professional golf a try following graduation but the expense proved too much. After two years he abandoned his goal of joining the pro ranks.
