Geneva senior Ben Clairmont came to his final hole Tuesday at Bartlett Hills with a lot of pressure on his shoulders.

The Vikings and Lake Park were locked in a tight battle for the DuKane Conference boys golf championship, and Clairmont had just birdied his 17th hole — one of his four birdies on the day — to give Geneva a chance.

Playing No. 1, a 385-yard uphill par 4, Clairmont’s approach hit the green but ended up 45 feet away. He walked up to the green and spotted a teammate.

“I saw one of my teammates sitting behind the green, I went up and asked him, he said, ‘You need to make this,’” Clairmont said. “I had to try.”

Unfortunately, Clairmont couldn’t drain a miracle putt. Instead, he ended up 4-putting to finish at 75 — the best round of the day for the Vikings but not enough to beat the young and talented Lancers.

“I was a little disappointed we got second because I had that opportunity, but it was fun,” Clairmont said. “The (first) green was quick. My approach shot should have been better.”

Lake Park won the DuKane title with a 302 team score, followed by Geneva (305) and Wheaton Warrenville South (307) in a three-team race out of the eight-team field.

The Lancers’ top three scores came from two freshmen and a sophomore. Freshman Arjav Shah and sophomore Sloan Voytek shot 73s, and freshman Griffin Michalak had a 74. Senior Henrik Willson shot an 81 to round out the scoring.

“It means a lot, it shows how far we’ve come,” Voytek said. “We struggled at the beginning of the season. It shows the camarderie on the team to come together on a tough course like this as well. The greens were really hard and fast.”

Voytek managed those tricky greens well, relying on his short game early in his round until he started hitting the ball better. He got up and down from a tricky lie on his eighth hole to save par, then birdied the following hole to get his round going.

“My short game really helped me out,” Voytek said. “I chipped really well and putted really well and I feel like that saved my round.

“Everyone contributed in their own way. Everyone played well today. I really like our team the next couple years.”

Nobody played better Tuesday than St. Charles North’s Caden Shanahan. The sophomore won the individual title with a 1-under-par 70, the only golfer to break par.

Shanahan finished three shots ahead of Wheaton Warrenville South senior Michael Johansen, St. Charles East senior Anthony Solare, and the two Lancers, Voytek and Shah.

“I didn’t have my best approaches but I scrambled really well and rolled some putts in at the end and that was the difference,” Shanahan said.

“This definitely was the top of the bucket list this year. It feels really good to get this one, obviously one that was marked on my schedule. I knew I had it in me to do it, but it’s great to go out and do it.”

With the shotgun start, Shanahan began his round on the par-4 seventh hole with a par. He bogeyed his fourth hole of the day, the 10th, but chipped in for birdie on the 12th and stayed at even par the next nine holes.

That included a tough par save on the 213-yard par 3 third hole when Shanahan recovered from a poor iron shot with a solid chip and then sinking a 15-foot putt.

“That was big for my confidence coming in,” Shanahan said.

With a two-shot lead at that point and three holes to go, Shanahan gave himself some more breathing room on the short par-3 fifth hole, hitting his 9-iron from 150 yards to 10 feet and draining the uphill putt for his second birdie.

Geneva’s other counting scores came from Nick Torrence (76), Matt Trimble (77) and Robbie Keller (77).

After Johansen, WW South’s third-place finish came thanks to Henry Burlage’s 74, a 79 from Colton Wood and three players shooting 81s.

Wheaton North shot a 320 to take fourth followed by Batavia (322), St. Charles East (324), St. Charles North (326) and Glenbard North (387).

Batavia’s Ryan Augustine shot a 77 to finish in the top 10 while Geneva’s Blake Makowski and Wheaton North’s Alexander Zielinski just missed with 78s.