Golf Becomes Latest Team To Play "For Welles"

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The Red Bandanna Game is one of college football's greatest traditions. It's relatively new compared to other, decades-old pieces of college football, but the game provides messaging that never fails to draw eyeballs to the story of Boston College graduate Welles Crowther's ultimate sacrifice while saving strangers during the tragic, horrific events of September 11, 2001.

BC's ongoing mission of "men and women for others" perfectly encapsulates Crowther's final minutes, and the story itself was captured perfectly in the documentary produced for ESPN by fellow graduate Drew Gallagher. The 10-minute profile is arguably the finest work by the network and told the whole story from first-hand accounts from Crowther's family and the people saved by a man they never knew.

It specifically outlined Crowther's signature red bandanna and explored the impact of the most recognizable symbol of a single person who wanted to quit working as an equities trader for the firefighter's life of servitude. It struck a nerve with sports fans and the greater public, and the bandanna became the ultimate totem for how one human being can give themselves as fully as possible to people they didn't know. Its beacon of light is a reminder of that sacrifice on an annual basis, and BC has long sought to acknowledge Crowther's unique place in its university fabric.

Almost a decade later, that story is ingrained at every level of Boston College, and the student-athletes who represent the Eagles personally hold themselves responsible for remembering Crowther. Saturday's Red Bandanna Game is without question the biggest and most public display, but nearly every team makes its own concerted effort to honor the former lacrosse player's memory.

The latest of those endeavors occurred last weekend when Boston College men's golf hosted its first tournament in recent memory at Turning Stone Resort in Verona, New York. Paired with the annual women's event later this month, the bookend events are part of a rebranded Red Bandanna Invitational that openly educated its attendees and reverberated through college golf with the latest tribute to a fallen hero from 20 years ago.

"It is part of the fabric and culture of Boston College, how it embraces Welles Crowther, the history, and his inspiration," said Drew Kayser, head men's and women's golf coach. "We were able to initiate a men's tournament and take over an existing event that we'd played in for eight or nine years. We had wanted to rename our BC Intercollegiate [women's tournament] to honor the red bandanna, and with the men's tournament coming on board, it just made sense to rename everything and rebrand the tournaments that we host."

The Turning Stone tournament already had a long history when Kayser offered to overtake the event from retiring Missouri head coach Mark Leroux. It served as an unofficial season kickoff in early September and was hosted by the Tigers and their Western New York native head coach despite the resort sitting over 1,000 miles from campus. Positioning it across Labor Day weekend helped make it a destination golf tournament for teams kick-starting their season, and the Eagles' first appearance produced a fifth place finish. They followed it up with a third place finish a couple of years later that was chased by a fourth place finish and again finishing third in 2019.

"Mark was always good to me," Kayser said, "and when I knew he was retiring, I approached him about taking over [the tournament]. He was very supportive of keeping it going, so the field morphed a bit. There had been anywhere from 11 to 18 teams [over the years], but I wanted to limit the field to 15 teams to make sure play moved. We wanted to keep a good pace of play and test the waters with different formats for holes and distances where we played all the way back rather than shorter [yardage] since they have three courses [at Turning Stone]."

The result was a massive step forward for a Boston College men's team that rarely, if ever, hosted a tournament. The Eagles finished second, two strokes behind West Virginia, after playing a 4-under-par first round, but both teams dominated the field and cleared third place George Mason by at least 19 strokes. BC was the only team to produce a round under par, and two Eagles, Jack Pogorelc and Ben Hong, finished second and third as two of the three golfers who went under par for the entire three-round tournament.

"Alison Crowther came out to Verona and spoke to the teams at the dinner on Saturday night," Kayser said, "and then again prior to [the final round] on Sunday morning, so it was great to have Welles' mother out there. The students nowadays are too young to remember September 11, but the story and inspiration really resonated beyond BC. When we sent the email out with the invitation, the response and emails that I received were really cool. Everyone told us how it was a great tribute and a great story and that Boston College should be proud [of this event]. There was even a coach in California who told me that he visited Ground Zero in New York City and said a prayer over Welles' memorial plaque, and I asked all of the coaches to send the ESPN clip to their players so they would know the significance."

Branding the tournament as the Red Bandanna Invitational was a unique opportunity for BC golf, which hosts the women's Boston College Intercollegiate tournament at Blue Hills Country Club for the past seven years and which rechristened this year's tournament to the Red Bandanna moniker, and brought another team under the growing umbrella of ways the Eagles honor Welles' memory and story. Football played two Red Bandanna Games during the 2021 season after the game at UMass fell directly on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and this week's game against Florida State is the annual celebration of Welles' life and story.

Men's basketball donned Red Bandanna uniforms for the first time last year when it played Villanova in the Never Forget Tribute Classic, and the women's lacrosse team - now the flagbearer for the sport BC formerly sponsored and for which Crowther played - annually awards the No. 19 to a player for its Red Bandanna Game. Swimming and diving ran the stairs at Alumni Stadium while wearing red bandannas, and the annual Red Bandanna 5K run is scheduled on-campus for next month.

"Taking our women's tournament a step further and making it about the Red Bandanna cements Welles' legacy with our program. We have [over a dozen] teams coming from all over, and we've had teams from the West Coast and Seattle come to this tournament. It's a lot of work, but it's awesome to see it in action, and Alison Crowther will be there with us for a bit. Having her come to the men's event and to the women's event, it's just inspirational, and having the players understand why they're playing and who Welles is, it's pretty tremendous."

Boston College men's golf returns to the links next week when it travels to Richmond, Virginia for the VCU Shootout, while the women open up their 2023-24 season this weekend at the Nittany Lion Invitational. Their Red Bandanna Intercollegiate event is scheduled for Monday, September 25 and Tuesday, September 26 at the Blue Hills Country Club in Milton.

Golf Becomes Latest Team To Play "For Welles"

Players Mentioned

Ben Hong

Jack Pogorelc

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