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Dan Beck knew he was coming into a good situation as Fairfield Middle School's boys golf coach.

But his first season as the Tribe's coach exceeded even his expectations.

Fairfield placed second at the 15-team Greater Miami Conference tournament Oct. 1 with a 294, just eight strokes back of first-place Mason.

"Fairfield has a strong golf program, and I expected them to do well," Beck said. "They did a little better than expected. After tryouts, I thought we had a pretty good team, and we did. We spread the talent over two teams, and they hit right where I was wanting them to be."

The Indians had 12 members on the team — five eighth-graders and seven seventh-graders. The squad was split into two teams during the season, and Fairfield ended up with a 5-6 dual match record.

"They progressed," Beck said, "and they should be pretty good next year as well. They showed a lot of improvement. Overall I think we did pretty well."

Beck took the Indians' top five players to the GMC tournament. They were: Chandler Gross, Chris Rossi, Jeff Sullivan, Kevin Muhlberg and Kyle Luensman.

Rossi finished as the individual runner-up with a 66.

Other team members were David Johnson, Sam Chenoweth, Austin McComas, Mike Jones, Jake Montague, Konner Ottaway and Matt Morris.

"It was a fun group of kids," Beck said. "They worked well together. They handled themselves very politely and professionally. They were a lot of fun."

"My main goal is for them to show improvement over the course of the season," he said. "To work on the aspects of their game. Work on their short game a lot, and see if we can't shave a couple strokes off."

Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5113 or smatthews@coxohio.com.