With a team total of 305 (+25), golf wrapped up its fall season on Saturday by finishing in a fourth-place tie at the annual City 6 Championship at the Union League Golf Club at Torresdale.

Freshman Matt Barnes led the Wildcats, firing a 73 to finish at three over par and in a tie for fifth individually. Barnes’s 73 was joined by a 75 from senior Alex Butler, a 78 from sophomore Connor Daly, a pair of 79’s from seniors Andrew MacMillan and Will Byrne and an 84 from freshman Reb Banas. 

“I didn’t hit it great today,” Barnes said after the round. “I got up and down from everywhere.”

The City 6 championship has become an annual tournament that features Philadelphia’s most prominent schools, and the Wildcats battle with Drexel, La Salle, St. Joes, Temple and UPenn in the 18-hole tournament. 

“The nice thing about the City 6 is that they always play a great golf course in the area,” Banas said. “The clubs around here kind of embrace the Division I college teams around here, which is great.” 

The par-70 golf course is played at 6,470 yards for the event and proved a challenging task for the players, who struggled with greens that were both severely sloped and extremely fast. 

“The golf course was very difficult,” Daly said. “The greens were really firm, and it was tough to hold them. You can’t be past the pin on any of these greens because they are so undulated from back to front. You’ve got to be super precise with your distance control. I missed a lot of shots long of these pins, and if you do that, you are going to struggle to even two-putt.”

Players also contended with the unusual hardship of trap shooters practicing on the course’s driving range during the round and a barrage of gunshot noises rang throughout the golf course. 

“We couldn’t use the range today because of the trap shooting,” Byrne said. “We had to go to Bensalem Township Country Club ten minutes down the road to warm up.” 

In the end, it was Drexel who was best able to handle the circumstances, as a dramatic birdie by senior Aaron Fricke on the eighteenth hole gave the Dragons a one shot victory with a team total of 288 (+8). Temple, with a total of 289 (+9), finished in the runner up position.

Fricke’s concluding birdie not only notched the win for his team, but also gave him this year’s individual title with a score of 69 (-1), one shot better than Temple’s John Barone. 

It was a disappointing end to the fall season. The ‘Cats will look to bounce back when the spring season kicks off in March.