The golf season is starting up this spring, and the Benilde-St. Margaret’s boys’ varsity golf team is ready. The golfers missed their season last year, so they are anxious to compete this year. 

Missing a season means less experience on the course, losing experienced players, and a disconnect between the coach and the players. “A lot of these kids, I didn’t even know who they were, how they played, because we missed last year. So this year, the whole team–not one kid–has played a varsity match,” head coach Mr. David Herbst said.

Despite having to work around this new road bump, the team has been performing well and shows promise for this spring season, even outperforming their biggest competitors Chaska and Chanhassen. “We played our first match of the year, we actually finished first place. We beat Chaska by two points… and Chanhassen, we beat them by four or five points so that was an awesome start for us,” Herbst said. 

Herbst has seen this performance from his new varsity group and is very excited about it. He has noticed this change in not only the team, but in how the team is perceived by their competition. “I really think that we can win the conference. I’ve been talking about that and a lot of coaches have invited us to different matches with really good teams which we’ve never got invites before because everybody knows that we’re up-and-coming [and] we’re getting better and better,” Herbst said. 

The matches this year have a new setup, which decreases the competitive edge of going head to head against your opponents. “We go in what’s called pods, so instead of playing the other team we actually have three of our guys go out … The kids were kind of complaining about that because they like playing against the competition, the other team and stuff like that, but that’s kind of gone away,” Herbst said. 

Even with the competition aspect being pushed to the side this season, two freshmen are catching the coaches’ and captains’ eyes for their performances on the course. “Blake Steensland and Charlie Moen [are] both really good players that usually shoot the best on the team, so I think they’ve got a bright next three years ahead of them,” captain Jack Dougherty said.