Oct. 1—MANDAN, N.D. — The Grand Forks Red River girls golf program discovered it can be more fun to be the hunter than the hunted.
One year after taking the favorite label into the North Dakota Class A state girls golf meet and coming up short, the Roughriders found redemption this season by reversing roles.
Red River’s Ella Speidel won medalist honors while the Roughriders knocked off favorite West Fargo Sheyenne to claim the team championship at Prairie West Golf Course on Tuesday.
Red River won the school’s sixth state championship in girls golf and first since 2017. Speidel becomes the Riders’ eighth all-time individual champion and the first since Morgan Hetletved in 2017.
“She played so consistently,” Red River coach Eric Sanders said. “She struck the ball well, was confident, had a plan and stuck with it. You’re playing in 35-mile per hour winds and, honestly, watching her calmly reset and take her time and soak in the moment was cool to watch. Everything seemed very calm and looked easy, but it wasn’t. She really had a good attitude.”
Sheyenne had swept every EDC meet this season but the Riders held an eight-stroke advantage after Day 1 at state. The Riders tacked on another six strokes after Day 2. All four Red River scorers were in the Top 10: Speidel shot a two-day 151, while Sophie Brakke, the state’s senior athlete of the year, shot a 165 for seventh and Lauren Soholt and Alexis Fabian both shot 166 to tie for ninth.
With a big lead in hand as the underdog, the Riders held a lot of conversations Monday night.
“Acknowledging and celebrating the good shots and processing the things we didn’t like so much so we weren’t surprised of anything that came our way,” Sanders said. “We talked about the feelings we would have but a lot of it was them knowing they would have the tools to stay mentally focused. Today, we looked around the van and wanted to enjoy our day with this group. In golf, you can’t try harder than you’re going to try. You have to embrace what you have and enjoy it. That’s what we did.”
Speidel said it helped the Riders didn’t feel like Day 1 was a shock.
“I wouldn’t say we were surprised,” she said. “We were expecting to do well at state. We know from last year, you can go undefeated in the regular season, and it comes down to the last meet. Being up eight wasn’t a surprise to us. We treated it like any other meet.”
Sanders said it was helpful to have a team that understood the other side of the coin from last season.
“It’s really hard to have all the pressure because that was us,” Sanders said. “We talked about how we believe in what we’re doing and to go do it with the attitude that keeps our mind focused where it needs to be. We spent the year making sure we were ready for this.
“We also attribute it to the fantastic competition we saw every time we played. Sheyenne is a fantastic golf team. Every time we came off the course this year we said that’s a really good round of golf. There was a positivity from these girls to know the entire year isn’t defined before it’s over.”
Speidel entered Day 2 as the clubhouse leader but only with a one-stroke lead on Sheyenne’s Payton Stocker. In the end, Speidel won by six shots over Stocker and Sheyenne teammate Zoe Keene.
“I just tried to not get overly excited or overly down,” Speidel said. “Whenever something bad happened, know you can move on to the next shot. Just staying consistent and not letting one big mistake snowball into many mistakes … try not to think about the leaderboard and keep it as normal of a round as I could.”
Speidel didn’t know she was medalist until she saw the reaction of others on her final hole.
“In my head, I think I knew there was a gap with Payton but I had no clue until I had finished and everyone was happy,” she said. “I knew throughout the season that I had gone medalist a couple of meets, so maybe I can do it when it comes to the end. I tried to play my style, and it ended up working out in the end.”
