In the third leg of the tournament at Mayflower Golf Club on Monday, Erickson led his team and the field again as he finished with a 79 to take home the Tomahawk Conference individual boys’ golf title for the first time. His strong play also helped SEU take home its fourth conference title as a team.

“It feels good to finish it all out after last year not closing down the third conference meet,” Erickson said. “But it really feels good to go out and even after a bad first nine holes, came back, battled through it, got the win.”

Erickson ended up finishing second overall in the tournament last year after taking sixth in the final leg in Sanborn.

Erickson did have some competition closely behind him leading up to this year’s third leg in Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Ben Pearson. Pearson finished second in the first two legs of the tournament and was looking for a strong final leg in hopes of winning the conference title.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Ben Pearson golfs during the final leg of the tournament in Fairfax, finishing second on the day for a second-place finish overall in the tournament.

Erickson was paired with Pearson, Springfield’s Christopher Thram and New Ulm Cathedral’s Owen Strei on Monday, and the group started on Hole 5. Pearson had a solid start and led the group after the first three holes before running into some trouble on Hole 8, which allowed Erickson to jump back in front.

Erickson had birdies on Hole 7 and Hole 8.

Pearson climbed back into it and recorded an birdie on Hole 4, helping him finish second with an 85. That also meant Pearson finished the tournament in second place overall with 76 points.

Strei ended up taking third (86) on Monday, which also gave him a third-place finish overall in the tournament with 69 points. Strei also drained a hole in one this past Saturday morning at Mayflower on Hole 2 with a 4 iron.

SEU’s Jacob Schultz took fourth (88) on Monday, while Thram took fifth (89). Thram took fourth in the tournament total with 65 points, while Schultz took fifth with 58 points.

The SEU boys finished first with a score of 359 on Monday, making it a clean sweep in all three legs. Cathedral had a nice team effort on Monday to finish with a 380 and take second, giving them a second-place finish in the conference tournament overall.

Springfield took third on Monday with a 390, which also gave the team a third-place finish in the tournament overall. Cedar Mountain finished fourth on Monday with a 394, while MVL took fifth with a 404.

In addition to Erickson and Schultz leading SEU, Sam Herzog shot a 92 to finish sixth, while Kaleb Weiss shot a 100, Blaine Arneson shot a 110 and Josh Sellner shot a 128.

“Everybody’s starting to play better right when we need them to,” Erickson said. “We’ll see if we can keep it going into sections and have momentum rolling for us — it’ll help a lot.”

GOBLIRSCH REPEATS

SANBORN — Calm, cool and victorious.

New Ulm Cathedral’s Kayla Goblirsch was all of those adjectives on Monday at Farmer’s Golf and Health Club as she shot an 83 to take home the Tomahawk Conference individual girls’ golf title for the second year in a row.

There wasn’t a ton of drama heading into the final leg of the Tomahawk Conference Girls’ Golf Tournament, reason being Goblirsch’s consistent dominance in the first two legs of the tournament.

She finished 18 strokes ahead of the next top golfer in the first leg at Buffalo Lake and 17 strokes ahead of the next top golfer in the second leg at New Ulm.

With the conference’s point system in play for the tournament and points being worth double for the final leg, however, Goblirsch still had to be on her game on Monday. In 2019, Goblirsch led all golfers after both the first and second legs of the tournament before a rocky third leg in Fairfax ended up costing her the conference crown.

Goblirsch is in her senior year now and has had enough success since then to outweigh that bad memory of 2019, and now she’s got another conference title to celebrate.

“That year definitely taught me that I can’t take anything for granted,” Goblirsch said. “And I also think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve just gotten more relaxed on the course and have focused on not getting so rattled if a shot doesn’t go my way and I’ve gotten better at recovery.”

MVL’s Abbie Riederer finished second on her team’s home course on Monday with a 95, while Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop’s Jenna Schweiss shot a 98 for third, SEU’s Liz Schwint shot a 100 for fourth and Cedar Mountain’s Morgan Engholm shot a 107 for fifth.

Riederer’s finish on Monday gave her 73.5 points for the tournament, good enough for second, while Schweiss finished the tournament third overall with 70 points. Engholm finished fourth in the tournament with 69.5 points, while her teammate Keanna Hultquist finished fifth with 57 points.

Goblirsch had a birdie on Hole 8 and said her short game played a big factor in her win.

“Today my short game definitely saved me,” she said. “I only hit my driver one time off the box, so I really had to rely on hitting solid iron shots off the box. And I didn’t always have the best iron shots, but I just was able to make some really good putts and put some chips really close to the hole, so that helped me out today a lot.”

The SEU girls shot a 443 to take first on Monday, while Cedar Mountain turned in a 454 for second and MVL took third with a 497.

The SEU girls’ performance on Monday, with points being worth double, ended up lifting the team to a share of the conference title also with 30 total points.

Also for the co-conference champion SEU girls, eighth-grader Sam Price shot a 108 to take sixth, while Meriden Andres shot a 116, Jaci Domeier shot a 119 and Chloe Walter shot a 122.

Cedar Mountain was the other conference champ with 30 points. Also for Cedar Mountain on Monday, Teresa Larsen shot a 110, Hultquist shot a 113, Jaylyn Welter had a 122 and Abbie Hacker shot a 123.

MVL finished third in the touney with 24 total points.