The summer is closing up shop and the start of the school year but the Carbon Dinos golf team is just getting started. The season starts on August 13 at North Sanpete and ends on October 16 & 17 at The Ridge Golf Course in West Valley.
Last season Carbon had a fourth-place finish at the State Championships finishing just five strokes behind third-place Richfield.
With the summer moratorium over the Dinos can get back to business and Coach Robbie Etzel talked with KOAL’s Drive Time Sports about what the offseason looks like, who will be back this season for Carbon, and this season’s schedule.
The offseason is pivotal for any sport but golfers need the motivation to go to the course and put in the work on their own, yes there are tournaments throughout the summer months but they need to spend time at the driving range and working on chipping and putting,
“I really think the biggest thing is for a lot of the kids to just be aware that the region, there’s no changes from last year, for some of the other kids that I see out there during the summer months, I give them the heads up that if they have the ability to travel during the summer during your offseason when you don’t have to worry about school, go play some of these courses. I’ve always said it we’re spoiled here at Carbon, we have a great course, it plays to a lot of our boys’ strengths, but there are some difficult courses that these other schools host at and it’s nice for these kids to be able to play it a couple of times before they’re just thrown into it in a tournament setting sometime in August or September.”
There were quite a few bright spots on the roster last season, Dayton King, a freshman won the Region 12 title, and Rydge Butler will also be returning, but last year’s squad was very senior-heavy so that means it’s time to reload.
“We lost about half of our team last year we had a very large senior class that was a big integral part of our success last year, but we have a lot of good golfers on the team. We have a lot of good golfers on the team, Dayton plays incredible, he’s one of them that travels all across the state in the summer months to play in these competitive tournaments, so he’s not one that I really have to worry about going into the season I know that he’s already taken those steps to be ready when August does roll around. Rydge Butler is in the same boat as well, and then I have another senior as well that’s been putting in a lot of the time necessary to get him ready for the upcoming season, Colton Wilkinson is putting in a lot of effort, making swing changes even with some injuries that he’s had, so we have a very solid base there with those seniors and then Dayton just being the outstanding golfer that he is, and we still have a few other juniors and sophomores that are going to come back this year that have been working on their game throughout the summer and they’re going to be an integral part of the team.”
The season will get started on August 13 at North Sanpete and then the next week the region comes to the Carbon Country Club. and with the region being somewhat open this year the pressure is on to play well early.
“Since I’ve been on the team we’ve had a tendency to have our home match within the first one to three matches of the season. It’s always difficult to have those expectations of playing well right out of the gate at home because our kids know that that’s our one opportunity to really pick up a lot of strokes. We have a tendency to play extremely well at the Richfield course, the boys did absolutely fantastic at the Juab course, but then you have those couple of other courses that are a little more difficult that are kind of tail-ending us this year we play Canyon View in the middle of September, that’s a challenging course down in Cedar City, and Millsite, depending on how the boys are hitting the ball, that can be a challenging course as well, and then to end the season at Manti, I think it’s kind of anyone’s region to win.”
You can listen to Coach Etzel’s complete interview by accessing the player below: