Glen Strandberg
Sports Editor

It wasn’t quite “Miracle on Grass,” but the Forest Lake boys golf team did surprise a lot of people at the state tournament on June 5 and 6.

“I am proud of the guys and what we accomplished,” head coach John Buck said after his golfers took second place in Class AA. “I think we kind of came in under the radar a little bit.”

When Day 1 ended at Bunker Hills in Coon Rapids, the Rangers were tied with Minnetonka for second, as each team had a score of 300. Eagan inched ahead with a 299, courtesy of Ryan Peterson’s phenomenal round of 66. Cretin-Derham Hall was also in contention with a 301.

Forest Lake’s Kyle Lewis was the low Ranger with a 72, and he was followed by Jeremy Tetrault’s 74 as well as Peter Follese at 76, and both John Young and Andrew Kelly at 78. Douger Jeans was on their tail with a 79.

The morning of Wednesday, June 6 rolled in, and what was supposed to be a perfectly pleasant day, turned out to be a blustery one. Dismissing the wind and rain, Minnetonka made its move behind Donald Constable’s 71 and finished the afternoon with a team score of 305. Their grand total of 605 would give them the state title, as Forest Lake’s round of 311 locked them into second place with a score of 611.

After Eagan shot a 320, compared to Cretin’s 317, it was Cretin-Derham Hall that would end up in third, seven strokes behind the Rangers.

Buck pointed to those gaps between the top three schools, so there was little room to argue about how his crew should have done better. “We deserved second, Minnetonka deserved to win,” he said.

Back in March, the idea of winning the state championship was a goal of Buck’s, but he wasn’t sure his team shared the same vision until deeper into their schedule.

“I’m not sure they believed in it at first,” he said, “but they started to once we started to win some tournaments, and taking care of business in the sections.”

To become Minnesota’s runner-up, Tetrault came on with a 76, which gave him a final score of 150 for the tournament. This put him into a three-way tie for ninth place overall, and one of those golfers happened to be Lewis, who shot a 78.

Completing the scores for the Rangers were Young at 77 (25th place) and Follese at 80 (29th place). Kelly also finished with an 80 (158 total), and Jeans shot an 84 (163).

“They played hard,” Buck said of his six golfers. “The back nine was brutal, the wind was blowing 35 miles an hour — it was tough.”

This was only the second time in Forest Lake’s history that the boys golf team had even qualified for state. Buck felt that even though his team’s initial reaction was disappointment, his group will soon appreciate 2007’s splendid conclusion.

“They’ll wake up tomorrow and realize that it was a good accomplishment,” he said. “Nobody else (no other golf team) at Forest Lake has done it before.

“It’s basically going to be our expectation every year is to get back here. I think that’s the only way you can get to where you want to go is to set the bar high and go for it.”

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