FLORENCE — Francis Marion’s golf team was preparing to travel to Chattanooga, Tenn. for its season opening tournament when it got the awful news about teammate Jonathan Lavin.
Lavin, a junior from Askim, Sweden, was killed in a car wreck Wednesday night.
The Patriots are still playing in Monday’s tournament, but certainly with heavy hearts.
“The ones that are here want to travel. They want to get out of here and play golf,” Francis Marion golf coach Mark Gaynor said. “We’ve talked with (Lavin’s) parents. They want us to honor him by playing.”
Gaynor said he was expecting a big season out of Lavin, along with the other members of the squad.
“(Lavin) would have been a major participant,” he said. “This is a very close team where every member contributes because you never know whose going to get hot on the course.”
The accident occurred shortly before 7 p.m. at the intersection of National Cemetery Road and Freedom Boulevard, approximately three miles from the FMU campus.
“As an athletic coach, this is a day you never expect to have to face,” Gaynor said in a statement Thursday. “ ... Jonathan will be greatly missed and he will always be a part of the FMU golf team.”
The 21-year old Lavin played in three tournaments for the Patriots last season after appearing in seven events as a freshman.
He was majoring in marketing, and was named to both the Peach Belt Conference Presidential and FMU Swamp Fox Athletic-Academic honor rolls for the 2007-08 academic year
.
The Patriots will host the 24th annual Raines Development Group Intercollegiate on Sept. 15 before participating in tournaments in Rhode Island, Georgia and North Carolina to close out the season’s opening month.
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