EAST PROVIDENCE — Fall, especially in New England, is considered by many to be the best time of the year to play golf. The weather is near ideal. Still warm enough to play in a polo and shorts, yet without the stifling heat and humidity of the summer and not at the whims of Mother Nature with the wind and rain of spring.

It's under that backdrop that members of the East Providence High School golf program, those few returnees left in the fold, continue to work on their games.

The always-proud Townies, for the last two decades-plus under the direction of former EPHS teacher Bill McEnery, have landed in a metaphorical divot with a dearth of players on the roster as the 2025 season lay on the horizon.

Next spring will be here closer than we think, way too soon especially for those of us of a certain age. So the time is now for any aspiring golfers to pick up a club and give the game a go.

One of the Townies returning in the spring is junior Nathan Carter, who essentially fell into the team's lap two years ago. As a freshman in 2022, who only took up the sport seriously less than two years earlier, Carter made an instant impact, holding down a scoring position in just about all of EP's matches. Last spring, Carter emerged as one of the area's burgeoning talents, entering the state tournament in the top 10 for scoring average individually.

As with so many people around the world, actually, Carter's affinity for golf came from what may likely be the most momentous time in his life, the COVID-19 pandemic. It began a bit out of boredom, of finding something to do while we were all cooped up for most of 2020.

"Basically it was during COVID," Carter explained. "I saw my dad's (Joseph) golf clubs in the shed and I was like, yeah, why not? That looks fun. I'd played golf before, but during COVID I really started to get into it. And then when I came up here (to Silver Spring Golf Course) where I could just hit the ball and practice, it was good for me. I could come up whenever. I only live a mile away. I could just do whatever, just play golf."

Whatever turned into his sporting passion. And it gave McEnery a highly-skilled player upon which to keep his program competitive against the likes of perennial high school powers Barrington and Portsmouth, against whom the Townies compete annually in the Interscholastic League's Eastern Division.

And it was Silver Spring, the often overlooked six-hole gem tucked just beneath Pawtucket Avenue in Riverside where the two initially met.

McEnery first learned of Carter, who he calls a "golf savant," when he was introducing his own then four-year-old grandson, Logan, to the game at the course. As he tells it, they were only planning to play a single hole, but once the elder McEnery caught a glimpse of Carter playing, it turned into a longer excursion.

"I saw a young man playing alone and he had a great swing," McEnery said. "By the time me and my grandson finished with the one hole, he (Carter) was back around ready to tee off at No. 1. So I started making conversation. I asked if he were in high school or maybe even college and he said, 'No, I'm in eighth grade."

According to McEnery, he immediately went into coach-mode, attempting to recruit him to join his team. He asked Carter if he was going to attend EPHS, and when he said, "yes, I knew I had at lease one very good player for a next few years."

The days of EPHS accessing the talents of youngsters whose families were/are members of one of the city's elite golf clubs are mostly gone. And as the cart long ago overtook caddies, so too is that avenue for getting players pretty much dried up.

Recent grads Michael Wetmore and Billy Fitzgerald were caddies, but players introduced to the sport in that fashion is well on the wane. How the Townies access players now and for the better part of the last 20 years is basically how they got Carter, as well as his mate and fellow Silver Spring player Noah Araujo, by fate and happenstance.

"Usually when kids start playing golf it's when they young with their parents," said Carter, who likewise toiled a bit caddying, but that was not his main influence to take up the game. "I feel like with our team it's different. We've all found golf in different ways, whether it was like me just finding golf clubs and saying, 'hey, let's do this,' or maybe watching it on TV."

He continued, "It's also like we're the underdogs, too. Other schools we play, the kids have been playing like since when they were six. That's not usually the case with us. I never really got into a sport before I got into golf. I played like T-Ball, Little League, but nothing ever really clicked like golf. And then when I started to get into it, I got really excited."

Carter is excited for his immediate and long-term golf future. He gladly accepts his role with Araujo as the elderstatesmen on the EPHS team and "feels like I do" have a responsibility to pay it forward, to bring more of his peers into the program. There's been some talk of the Townies entering into a co-operative with another program, but he and McEnery would "like it if we could come together and find players from our community."

"One of the best parts is, even though I like to think of myself as an athlete, you don't have to be very athletic to play. And that's a great thing," Carter added. "Anybody can just come and play. It's all inclusive. Anybody can pick up a golf club and you never know, you could be one of the best. You find a swing and work at it, you never know."

And there's no time like the present, at this time of year in this season when the weather is still nice.

"I think that fall is definitely the best time of the year to play golf," Carter concluded. "Not that I don't like playing in the spring, but I think the weather in the fall is still all-around better for golf."