By John Rittenhouse
A combination of returning talent and some incoming recruits give the Hills-Beaver Creek-Ellsworth boys' golf program a positive glow as the season approaches.
The Patriots will begin the year with a 20-player roster consisting of one senior, eight juniors, four sophomores, one freshman, two eighth-graders and four seventh-graders.
The roster is highlighted by four players with post-season experience from 2001 and some new golfers who could help the team out this spring.
"There is an unknown factor with this team," said Patriot third-year coach Tim Lange. "We got some new blood on the team, and it looks like they might be able to help us. They seem to be an eager bunch of kids that have a good, competitive nature about them. We've been doing a lot of putting inside this year in practice, and they are being competitive at it. That is something I like to see."
H-BC-E is coming off a 3-6 season in 2001 that included a fourth-place finish in the Sub-Section 10 Tournament.
The Patriots did lose seniors Dean Moss and Tom Beaner from the 2001 squad.
Moss, who advanced to the section meet as a junior, turned in H-BC-E's second lowest score during the Sub-Section 10 meet last spring. Beaner also was a member of that team, recording the squadÕs sixth lowest tally.
Moss and Beaner will be missed, but members of the 2002 team will have an opportunity to improve their games like no other players before them have had.
"We'll be using the driving range at the new Beaver Creek course as soon as it opens (in early April)," Lange said. "That really should help our kids out. I don't know if these guys have had much of a chance to work on their games on a driving range before. It's something kids need to fine-tune their swings and develop a swing pattern through repetition."
Having access to a driving range will make players like sophomore Tom Janssen better.
Janssen was the lone Patriot to advance out of the sub-section field after tying with Luverne's Kelsey Anderson for the fifth and final qualifying positions at the event.
Janssen went on to shoot a 90 at the section meet, which was seven strokes away from the 83 that was needed to advance to the state meet.
Juniors Blake Brommer and Kyle Sammons also could benefit from extra practice swings.
Brommer, a section qualifier in 2000, recorded the team's third best score at last yearÕs section meet. Sammons fired H-BC-E's fifth best score at the same event.
Ben Herman, an eighth-grader who shot H-BC-E's fourth best score at the sub-section meet last spring, rounds out the returning letter winners.
Lange feels junior Clint Roozenboom and sophomore Jordan Scott, who received some varsity exposure last spring, are other candidates to make the team this year.
Juniors Dustin Bonnema and Aaron Blank and sophomores Adam Lange and Jeremy Elbers could move up to the varsity level after competing in the program last year.
New players Jeremy Tiesler, the team's lone senior, juniors Mike Herding and Dusty Seachris and freshman Travis Broesder also will receive the opportunity to play on the varsity squad.
Junior Wayne Baker, eighth-grader Nick Deutsch and seventh-graders Tom Scholten, Yancy Parrow, Chris Ahrenholtz and Adam Finke are other hopefuls with a team that is aiming to improve in 2002.
"I think we can do better than we did last year," Lange said. "A lot of it will depend on how much time these kids will be able to spend on a course trying to improve their games. As far as wins, I always like to shoot for 50 percent of our matches, and we might do even better than that."
The way things looked as of this writing, there will be no Patriot girls' team to report on this year.
Lange said problems between some of the team members last year led to them not playing the sport this year.
The Patriot coach hopes to recruit some girls to play golf for H-BC-E as the spring progresses, but he has nothing to report on that front right now.