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Byron Center golf team set to build off of school record performance

Posted at 11:38 PM, Apr 29, 2019
and last updated 2019-04-29 23:39:13-04

BYRON CENTER, Mich. -- The Byron Center golf team fired a school record 141 last Wednesday at the OK Green jamboree that is hosted at Railside Golf Course.

"It was great coming in seeing the three under, seeing us beat all the competition," senior Connor Tear said.  "Having Tan (Tanner Moore) post that 33 is pretty awesome, so it was just really exciting, something to build off of."

While posting a score of 3-under-par is never really expected, the Bulldogs know they have a group that is capable of shooting some low scores.

"Me and Tear ... we can go pretty low, and Locke can go low," senior Tanner Moore said. "Then Reese (Wrench), I wasn't expecting a 36 out of him, but yeah he is pretty good too."

Moore, Tear, and Alex Locke have been helping to lead the Byron Center golf team for three years, but this year's squad has depth. Last Wednesday, they had scores of 39 and 41 that they did not count.

"Even our five and our six, freshman Brayden Elzinga and our junior Ethan Cowlbeck, they are just great assets," Tear added.  "Last year, we couldn't really have anybody posting a pretty good fifth score, but now we have guys that can go out there and post 80, high 70's in a regular, so that is just great to have."

"These kids have put in a lot of work. They are all multi-sport athletes," 17th-year head coach Jeff Krauss said. "I've got football players, basketball players, kids that play soccer, tennis, so they have got a lot of experience competing, and I think that's is very beneficial to our golf team when you have kids that compete in other sports."

There are many good teams in the area. Byron Center is not even ranked in Division 2 in the state rankings, despite qualifying for state the last four years and finishing 11th last season.

"We don't worry about rankings" Krauss added. "We play in tournaments with good teams every week. We try to schedule the best courses, the best tournaments, so we see a lot of these teams, and we just know that we can play with a lot of the teams. But there are a lot of good teams in this area, I think this year more than any other year. So it's going to be tough. Our goal is to win our conference first and then make the state tournament and just see what happens from there."

As the Bulldogs continue to play well, their confidence elevates as they pursue their goals.

"I guess it just shows that we can go low even if we are down, like early at states or the first day at the tournament," Moore added. "We can fight back and shoot a low score."

Byron Center has another OK Green Jamboree at Diamond Spring in Hamilton on Tuesday.