By JEFF STAHLHUT

For the Call

The season is over for the Lindbergh High School boys’ golf team.

The Flyers didn’t win the state championship. They didn’t place second. They took sixth in their district and nobody from the team made it to state.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a special season, though. As a matter of fact, one of the Flyers did something quite refreshing that you don’t often see in the sports arena.

Junior Donovan Davis — who missed state last season by one stroke — found himself on the borderline once again this season.

“He was playing really awesome,” Lind-bergh Coach Mike Tyler told the Call. “And I was really proud of him after I learned what he had done.”

What he did, in case you’re wondering, was penalize himself a stroke for an in-fraction while marking his ball that he — and only he — knew had happened. No witnesses observed it, no coaches or players were around when it happened, but Da-vis knew he had made an error and penalized himself accordingly.

The result was Davis being penalized one stroke, and once again missing state by — you guessed it — one stroke.

“You always hear about the bad stuff,” Tyler said. “I sent out e-mails to a lot of people telling them what Donovan had done. The response has been overwhelming. He should be commended for what he did.”

Donovan Davis missing out on reaching the state tournament is unfortunate. But when you consider that he knew how tight it was and how important each and every stroke would be, his honesty and integrity on the course is admirable.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” Tyler added. “But he doesn’t look at it like that. He sees it as something he was supposed to do, and he did the right thing.”

A young man doing the right thing when he had the opportunity to — for lack of a better word — cheat. Refreshing, indeed.

And for the junior Lindbergh golfer he’ll get another chance next year.