Boys Golf: A team on the move

Coach Jon Holmes and his team checked out the Section 1 leader board...

and liked what they saw.

Tiger coach Jon Holmes said the best way to describe his senior-dominated 2012 squad was "a team on the move."

"From our first meet to our last there were very few times when we took a step back," he said. "We continued to improve.

"That was very evident in our conference play. We started in sixth place, then went to fifth, fourth and third and we had an impressive team score of 312 at the conference meet at the The Chaska Town Course."

Holmes also gave his Tigers credit for their 316 team score in the opening round of the Section 1AAA Championships where they advanced to the final round for the first time in many years. Farmington eventually placed sixth in the section meet.

Six of the seven varsity players earning letters this spring were seniors: Tom May, Mitch Reed, Jake Hanson, Ryan Kelly, Tony Lalani and Josh Cordes. The lone underclassmen to earn a monogram was eighth-grader Erik Holmstrom.

May had a brilliant senior year, earning all-Missota Conference honors for the first time and advancing to the Class AAA state meet where he finished in a 35th place tie in an 88-player field.

Coach Holmes and state meet qualifier Tom May

Holmes said the 2012 campaign could have been even better had a fourth scorer emerged from the six-player varsity squad.

"Everyone seemed to take his turn at finishing third behind Tommy and Erik," he said, "but we just struggled to get that fourth posting to really give us that breakout team score."

With only Holmstrom returning from this year's team, the Tigers might be looking at a rebuilding project in 2013.

"We will be very young," Holmes said. "We have a couple of juniors with JV experience and Grant Hauswirth played a tournament or two with the varsity this year.

"Other than that we will have to hope the younger guys get in a lot of junior tournaments over the summer and gain some experience."