Bunker mentality? Naaah...

While opponents lugged matching, personalized golf bags onto the putting green at Ramblewood Golf Course, the Camden County Tech golf team gathered around coach Dave Burns' dusty blue SUV, doing its own pre-match thing.

"Does anyone need balls or tees?" Burns asked. Two hands shot up.

"Burns, I need gloves," one boy said. Coach fished around in the back of his car and produced a brand-new package.

Going into one of its final nine-hole matches of the season, the team was loose and unbothered by the fact that several players were missing, away at a vocational skills competition.

Their record going into the match at the Mount Laurel course: 3 wins, 13 losses. Their opponents, Lenape High, were 10-3, and had just finished second in a tournament with 55 teams.

In a world where youth sports are increasingly competitive, the Camden County Tech squad is a team that plays for fun. Burns doesn't know his team's record offhand - he has to look it up - and he might leave a match without knowing the score.

In a sport where equipment costs and greens fees mean that not everyone has the opportunity to play, they are a team that starts from square one. Unlike their opponents, many of the players on Camden County Tech join as freshmen having never swung a club or set foot on a green.

Some would find Coach Burns' job unenviable - the lack of wins frustrating, the lack of prior golf skills among the players maddening. But the former math teacher and current school technology coordinator loves the game, and believes in his players.

"As far as I'm concerned, every day is a good day for the kids," he said, directing his team to the putting green for a few minutes of practice. "They're out there, they're enjoying themselves. The smile when the kid who has no confidence smacks the ball down the middle - that's great."

That's not to say he doesn't have ambitions. He'd like his kids to consistently break 50 (for nine holes) by their junior year.

"There's a lot of guys who play golf who never shoot 100" for 18 holes, Burns said. "One thing about golf is you play against yourself, your best score. And I try to foster some competition: who's got the best score today?"

Burns' goals are decidedly different than those of top teams out for impressive records and championships. The school his students attend - the county's vocational school, with campuses in Blackwood and Pennsauken - is focused on producing carpenters and plumbers, auto mechanics and hairdressers, and that makes a difference, he said.

"At our school, we don't have such a big athletic pool," he said. "We have a big special-needs population, and with those kids, you just work around their issues. We don't cut kids."

The progress made by his teams over the years is especially sweet to Burns.

When he took over as golf coach 12 years ago, his team had three members, none of whom had any prior golf experience. None owned even a single club.

"I'd buy a set of clubs at a yard sale and we'd use them," said Burns. "I've had other coaches give me clubs. I've had other people give me clubs."

And then there was the player who wore camouflage pants to matches and had to be convinced that Army boots on a golf course were a bad idea.

But slowly, things have improved. These days, Burns usually attracts one or two kids - out of a team of about 10 - who join with some experience. Many bring some clubs of their own.

"Most of the other kids don't have that, and that's fine. We start freshman year," he said.

The golf season begins in early March, but the first match isn't played until April. So Burns spends that first month at the driving range a lot, working on the fundamentals - grip, swing plane, hand-eye coordination.

Still, the gulf remains wide between his team and its opponents.

"You have kids who are members of country clubs, kids whose equipment, in one bag, costs more than my whole team's, combined," he said.

That doesn't bother junior golfer David Ritter.

Ritter started playing golf in eighth grade, and by the time he came to Camden County Tech to study drafting, he knew he wanted to play on the team.

The Lenape match - another loss - wasn't frustrating, he said.

"We didn't really expect to win the match," said Ritter, 17, of West Berlin. "But I like playing with better players from the other teams. We like when we can win, but we don't get mad when we don't win. We're just happy to play."

Like Ritter, junior Scott Ruoff has improved his score every year. Ruoff, the team's number one golfer, started as a freshman with a score in the high 40s. Now he's shooting in the low 40s every match.

Burns deserves a lot of the credit for that improvement, said Ruoff, who's studying landscaping.

"He's an exciting coach, energizing, fun to be around. He's helped me a lot. My freshman year, I had a bad swing, but he helped me to fix it," Ruoff said.

Chris Foley, the Lenape coach, had nothing but praise for the job Burns is doing.

"He does some good things with these kids, and they're the type of kids who need a little extra help," Foley said.

For his part, Burns genuinely gets a charge out of coaching.

"Seeing the growth is rewarding," he said. "When guys come back to see me after they graduate, they're all hitting well. When they're done with me, they'll beat the guys from work they play with."