This weekend nearly 300 golfers will tee it up as part of the 50th NewsChannel 7 Golf Classic. Among them, a couple of teammates from Marquette who call Northcentral Wisconsin home.

"Growing up that's what I wanted to do," said Kelly Kretz, on playing college golf. "I was playing all the time and when I was young, I wanted to go play college golf somewhere."

The Antigo native did exactly that, landing at division one Marquette University.

"Transition was smooth. I've played in every event since I've been there."

That same year, another Northcentral Wisconsin golfer realized the same dream as Medford's Matt Haase joined Kelly as a member of the Golden Eagle golf team in Milwaukee.

"The big city, Marquette's kind of special in a way, there's a small campus but it's in a big city," Haase said.

Before these two teamed up down at Marquette, in fact, before they ever even met at all, it was the site of this year's NewsChannel 7 Golf Classic, the Wausau Country Club that back in 2005 Matt became the youngest champion in tournament history at the ripe old age of 16. Kelly finished just one stroke back in second.

"When I was in Medford it was the biggest tournament around," Haase said. "It was like the Masters of central Wisconsin."

"At the time I didn't even know Matt," said Kretz. "We didn't know each other until the summer before we got to school. Now we've lived together the last three years."

And now at the golden anniversary of the Golf Classic, these collegiate teammates will take the course together once again, but face-off head-to-head.

"It'll be a fun first round to play with Kelly and go out there... play well and see what happens," Haase said.

"He played really well," said Kretz. "I'm not sure what he scored, but I'm pretty sure that it was under par. Maybe I can get him this year."