{"id":312846,"date":"2025-11-28T19:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T19:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/312846\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T19:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T19:18:09","slug":"mens-golf-signs-vertti-hamalainen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/312846\/","title":{"rendered":"Men&#8217;s Golf Signs Vertti Hamalainen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">NORFOLK, Va. \u2013 Old Dominion University men&#8217;s golf has its first member of its 2026 signing class as the Monarchs announced Vertti Hamalainen has committed to playing for the program.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">\u201cVertti is everything a coach is\u00a0looking for in a recruit \u2013 a great student, great golfer, and a great guy. I\u2019m\u00a0looking forward to having him represent Old Dominion,\u201d said Associate Head Coach <a href=\"https:\/\/odusports.com\/staff\/barry-marple\" title=\"Barry Marple\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Barry Marple<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Originally from Finland, Hamalainen moved to the United States in 2020. He has served as his team captain at Montclair High School and has earned MVP three years in a row. He posted a second-place finish in the 2024 New Jersey Essex County Tournament. In 2025, the NJPGA Junior Tour listed him as a Top 30 Player for his class in the New Jersey Boys High School Rankings. He also won the 2025 Essex County Tournament, finished second at the New Jersey SEC Sectional Tournament, and made it to the New Jersey Tournament of Champions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">A multi-sport athlete since he was five, he also played soccer on the national level until his sophomore year when he decided to focus solely on golf. Hamalainen has posted Top 10 finished in the MET Junior Championship and New Jersey Junior Amateur Championship this year and qualified for the New Jersey Amateur and the Northern Junior.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Ranked sixth in the 2026 graduating class for his state in the Junior Golf Hub rankings, he is also listed 563rd nationally.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">\u201cVery excited to move down to the warm south and represent a great school\u00a0in the sport I\u00a0love,\u201d said Hamalainen. \u201cI want to thank Coach\u00a0Marple and the coaching staff for giving me this opportunity! I\u2019m super pumped to get to work and represent ODU aside fellow Monarchs!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORFOLK, Va. \u2013 Old Dominion University men&#8217;s golf has its first member of its 2026 signing class as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,139488,139487,139491,139489,26453,139490,98102,139486,139492,139493,82],"class_list":["post-312846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-monarchs","tag-odu","tag-odu-athletics","tag-odu-monarchs","tag-old-dominion","tag-old-dominion-athletics","tag-old-dominion-monarchs","tag-old-dominion-university","tag-old-dominion-university-athletics","tag-old-dominion-university-monarchs","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}