After an extremely close match, Dartmouth High School’s golf team lost to Old Rochester Regional, 266-265.

Hosted by Dartmouth at the Allendale Golf Club, both teams had warm but windy weather conditions to contend with.

Unlike high school football teams, golf teams are well into their seasons. Having started their season in the first week of September, Dartmouth played their sixth game of the season this week against Old Rochester.

“[The season] goes pretty quickly because you run out of nice weather,” said Dartmouth Coach Mike Frates.

Their schedule can get pretty hectic. Because the number of warm weather days is dwindling, they compete in about three games a week. Most of their practice time happens in the off-season due to such time constraints.

“It’s just range and chipping putt and just [working] on your game because, once the season gets started, you really don’t have a lot of time,” Frates said.

Dartmouth boasts a young team with a lot of new promise.  Seniors Cam Clark and Justin DeBortolli have been the team’s most consistent performers this year.

The team have a lot of goals lined up for the season, first of them being to qualify for sectionals as a team. With 10 matches left in their season, they’ll have to win half of their games to qualify.

“We want to win as many games as we can and then, in doing that, if we happen to win our league ... that’s great,” Frates said.

Even if they don’t qualify as a team, players have the opportunity to qualify on individual basis by scoring well throughout the season.

“But we’re a team first,” Frates affirmed. “And then we go from there.”

Dartmouth came into the game against Rochester with a 2-3 standing. They’ve been consistently playing skilled teams and Frates was pleased with his team’s performance against such stiff competition.

However, matches are only going to get tougher, Frates said. Dartmouth, now 2-4, will be playing Bridgewater-Raynham.

"We just need to be more consistent with our play," Frates said.