Tupper Lake golf team (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)

TUPPER LAKE — A young roster of Tupper Lake golfers had a slow start last season, but showed notable improvements toward the end of the season. And with a lot of returning players this year, coach Matthew Bancroft has high hopes for his team of mostly underclassmen.

“The big thing I’m looking forward to is having an experienced team,” he said. “There’s a huge difference between being a match player and exhibition.”

At the end of last season, Bancroft said the future looked bright.

“We’re still not at the point where we’re competing against the bigger schools,” he said after a match in Tupper Lake last May. “But the nice thing is we’re such a young squad. I’ve coached kids for a lot of years, and one thing I know is that ninth-graders are a little squirrely. So I’m really looking forward to those guys coming out (in 2018).”

Bancroft said one drawback to having such a young team is the mental aspect of golf can be more challenging to kids who haven’t quite come into their own yet.

“The biggest thing that I don’t think we experienced last year — but I know does happen — is you will get situations where kids will start messing with other people just to mess with them. They want to win, so if I can take you out of the game mentally, it’s easier for me to win.

“Golf is an easy game to do that in. In golf, you’re your own worst enemy.”

Bancroft said that after last year’s improvements, he’s hoping the returning players have held on to those gains over the winter.

“We’re looking for growth again. I don’t think we’re going to see as rapid a growth as we saw last year,” he said. “I’m hoping to see us get off to a start with 40s and 50s and see if we can actually see some 30s.

“But at the same time, they’re 10th-graders. They still have a couple more years to really be good if they can continue to progress.”

Ninth-grader Pat Clark, who is returning to the team after holding one of the top slots last year as an eighth-grader, said he’s just looking forward to getting back out on the links.

“It’s quiet, just time to myself,” Clark said of golf. “We’re kind of just like a family, like a team’s a family, so we’re all pretty close. We just go out and have fun.”