Advertisement

Defending champ Lake City back in driver's seat at Class AA girls golf state meet

jason feldman, post-bulletin, rochester, minn.
·5 min read

Jun. 13—JORDAN — Patience, poise, experience.

Lake City has all of that.

The two-time defending state champion and Section 1AA champion needed all of it, too, in Tuesday's opening round of the 2023 Class AA state meet.

Shortly after the turn, the Tigers trailed Pequot Lakes by double figures, but Lake City has been through this before.

The Tigers were strong down the stretch at the Ridges at Sand Creek in Jordan and fired an opening-round 322, good for a seven-shot lead over Pequot Lakes entering Wednesday's final round. Third-place Providence Academy is a distant 18 shots back (340).

Individually, Section 1AA medalist Jordana Windhorst Knudsen was remarkably consistent on the back nine after an up-and-down front. She finished at 3-over-par 75, and is in a four-way tie for second place.

Byron's Calie Dockter also showed her experience and ability to recover. The junior opened her round with back-to-back birdies, but had a stretch of three straight bogey or worse on the back. Yet, Dockter settled in and was steady over the final three holes, parring them all. She finished with a 7-over 79 and is hovering just outside the top 10, in 11th place.

Lake City's Emma Berge and Ella Matzke both shot 82 and are tied for 19th. Mattie Mears fired an 83 (T-27) for the Tigers' fourth score.

Lourdes junior Ellie Leise also shot an 83 and is tied with Mears for 27th place. Leise had three birdies and eight pars in her round.

—Park Rapids senior Madysen Maninga. She made nothing worse than a bogey, and made just four of those, to go along with two birdies and 12 pars. Maninga is the individual leader, but she has no breathing room. Her 2-over-par 74 on Tuesday gives her a narrow one-shot lead over four players — Windhorst Knudsen, Pequot Lakes' Annie Neva, Providence Academy's Grace Petzold and Hawley's Sophie Cook — entering the final round.

—Lake City is back in a familiar spot, its 322 score giving it a seven-stroke advantage over Pequot Lakes with 18 holes to go in the season. When the final group of the day made the turn onto the back nine, the Tigers trailed Pequot Lakes by double digits. That's where their patience showed. Lake City has been through it before and it has six players in its lineup who know how to play the course one shot at a time. Quickly, Lake City made up that deficit and shot past Pequot over the final nine holes. Mattie Mears' 11-over-par 83 might have been the key round of the day for the Tigers. The sophomore played the five-hole stretch from No .7-No. 11 in two-under par, making back-to-back birdies on Nos. 7 and 8, then making three consecutive pars.

—Byron's Dockter, in 11th place after Round 1 (79), has a top-10 finish in her sights, sitting one shot back of Redwood Valley's Mila Jenniges. Dockter made three birdies and two pars in her first seven holes, then rallied nicely on the back nine after one tough hole. She made an eight on the par-4 14th, but immediately came back with a bogey on the 87-yard, par-3 15th hole, then parred Nos. 16, 17 and 18 to end the day as one of 15 players to break 80.

—Lourdes junior Ellie Leise turned in a strong round, too, shooting 83 to sit in a tie for 27th place. Leise had a frustrating beginning to her round, sitting at 5-over-par after two holes. But she persevered, made pars on seven of the next 10 holes and birdies on two of them — the par-4 sixth hole (323 yards) and the par-5 seventh (420 yards).

—Pine Island/Zumbrota-Mazeppa's Olivia Cordes missed out on a spot in the state meet last year by nine places at the Section 1AA meet. She showed few nerves and a lot of resilience on Tuesday in her first round at state. Cordes sat 5-over after three holes, but she had only one score worse than a bogey on the final 15 holes. She made six pars and a birdie on those holes, the birdie coming on the par-5 18th, which was her ninth hole of the day.

—Pequot Lakes, which sits in second place, only seven shots back of Lake City, relies a good amount on its top three — junior Annie Neva, senior Morgan Krieger and sophomore Genevieve Birkeland. They had the best cumulative score among any team's top three golfers on Tuesday, combining to shoot 16 over par. Their other three players were 25-, 29- and 39-over. Lake City's top four players are all within the top 30 entering the final round.

—Last year's state medalist, Mallory Belka of Perham, graduated last spring. That means Lake City's Matzke and Park Rapids Area's Anna Eckmann are the top returning players from last year's meet. Matzke finished second, three shots back of Belka, while Eckmann was two more shots back. This week, Matzke is tied for 19th after one round (82), while Eckmann is tied for sixth (76).

CLASS AA GIRLS

TEAM TOTALS

1. Lake City 322, 2. Pequot Lakes 329, 3. Providence Academy 340, 4t. Redwood Valley 356, 4t. Park Rapids 356, 6. Holy Angels 365, 7. Jordan 366, 8. Rock Ridge 391.

INDIVIDUALS

(Top 10 + Section 1 golfers)

1. Madysen Maninga (Park Rapids) 74, 2t. Jordana Windhorst Knudsen (LC) 75, 2t. Annie Neva (Pequot Lakes) 75, 2t. Grace Petzold (Providence) 75, 2t. Sophie Cook (Hawley) 75, 6t. Anna Eckmann (Park Rapids) 76, 6t. Morgan Krieger (Pequot) 76, 8t. Annika Jyrkas (Fergus Falls) 77, 8t. Victoria Woytassek (Jordan) 77, 10. Mila Jenniges (Redwood Valley) 78,

11t. Calie Dockter (Byron) 79, 19t. Ella Matzke (LC) 82, 19t. Emma Berge (LC) 82, 27t. Ellie Leise (Lourdes) 83, 27t. Mattie Mears (LC) 83, 33t. Rylee Finney (Byron) 85, 36. Olivia Cordes (PIZM) 86, 46t. Lily Sullivan (St. Charles) 91, 46t. Kaitlin Schmidt (LC) 91, 52t. Brooke Bee (LC) 94.

COMPLETE ROUND 1 RESULTS