The Minot North boys golf team won its first state title in 2025, becoming just the fourth team from the WDA to accomplish that feat. WDA Sports

Some programs go more than a decade after their inaugural season before claiming their first state title.

For others, they are still chasing that elusive first championship, coming up short of their ultimate goal year after year.

It took the Minot North boys golf team three years to climb the mountaintop and supplant its flag at the summit, bringing home not just the program’s first state title, but the school’s first team state title as well. Making it even sweeter was the fact that it came on their home course at Vardon Golf Club, winning by seven strokes over Grand Forks Red River and giving the WDA its first boys golf state title since 2013.

“We want to keep up with the standard these kids have set,’ Minot North coach Shane Hannegrefs said. “The kids in the program are the ones that set the standard, that set expectations, how you conduct yourself on the golf course, how you conduct yourself off the golf course. We’ve had outstanding kids in the program for many years, so they are the ones that take it up one rung of the ladder and show it to the rest of the team how you maintain that success.”

The Sentinels became the 12th state-title winning program in boys golf, joining Bismarck Century, Minot High and Bismarck High as teams from the WDA to have hardware in their trophy case. Minot North won its first state title before Dickinson, Jamestown, Bismarck Legacy, Mandan, Bismarck St. Mary’s, Turtle Mountain, Watford City and Williston.

“It’s a confidence boost,” senior Walter Langhans said. “It gives me a lot of confidence that we can accomplish anything throughout the year.”

Hannegrefs said that while the Minot North program is still just in its fourth year as a varsity program, many of the kids both past and present have been golfing in the Minot program for years with Minot High before the split. So when the Sentinels began their inaugural season, they started with more experience and team chemistry than those starting their program from the bottom up.

Minot North is also the defending WDA regular season champion after winning seven of the 11 tournaments it participated in. Century won three events and Mandan won one. The Sentinels never finished outside of the top three, placing second in three tournaments – including the West Region Meet – and third once at the St. Mary’s Invite.

The Sentinels will be without three of last year’s key contributors for its title-defense season after graduating Kasen Rostad, Tyler Bast and Bennett Bartsch. Rostad finished third at the state tournament and was both the Class A Senior Athlete of the Year and WDA Senior Athlete of the Year, leading the team with a WDA best and school record 71.5 scoring average. Rostad was also tied for third at state in 2024 and won the WDA individual title that same year. He received medalist honors in five tournaments and led the Sentinels in scoring in 10 events.

“He just became such a confident, steady kid his senior year,” Hannegrefs said of Rostad. “He had that belief that he was going to play well and that he could play well in pressure moments. We had a few seniors who certainly did that last year. It wasn’t just him. We had Bennett and Tyler who had great senior years as well, but he was just consistent. He was in this role last year where he was just calm, he played his own golf ball and didn’t worry about other things. If our kids just go out and remember that they can only play their golf ball. We don’t get to go out on defense. We don’t get to score points on another team and you can’t pass your teammates the ball. They can just go play their golf ball.”

Bartsch factored into the team score as a top-four performer in seven tournaments, averaging a 77.8 in those events. Bast finished in the top-four in team scoring on six occasions, averaging an 81.

“We lost three big guys, but we still have that leadership and that experience we had,” senior Kyler Weishaar said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to prove that we’re still a good team that can win tournaments.”

Rostad won’t be able to contribute to Minot North’s team score on the golf course, but he’ll be around the program offering advice to the team as a member of the coaching staff. Rostad is also golfing collegiately at Minot State.

While the Sentinels lost one all-state golfer in Rostad, they bring back another with Langhans. He is one of six seniors on the roster. Langhans posted an average round score of 77.1, shaving off 5.5 strokes from his 2024 average. He won medalist honors at the Mandan Invite with a 70 and placed fifth at the state meet with a two-day total of 150.

The Sentinels are in a bit of uncharted territory having to replace key members of the team for the first time in the program’s history. For the first three years, the top seven players on both the varsity and junior varsity squads have remained unchanged. Despite the new faces, Langhans said the standard doesn’t change.

“The mindset is to keep that standard high and let the younger kids know that we can win state and anyone can win state, but this is our standard,” Langhans said. “We’re not just a state-qualifying team. We’re a state-championship team.’

Other returners who contributed to Minot North’s scoring are Weishaar and sophomore Teegan Dangel. Weishaar shot a season-best 72 on the first day of the two-day Bakken Classic. Dangel’s best round came at the West Region meet, where he carded a 76.

Hannegrefs said he expects Langhans, Weishaar, Dangel and senior Kaden Carlson to be the main contributors to Minot North’s team scores, but also believes that the rest of the roster has the potential to put up a good score if one of the top four has a bad round. Those names include seniors Hunter Anderson and Brandon Broderson, junior Ryker Stahl and sophomores Michael Fundingsland and Jackson Grundstrom.

“I know they’ve put in the time over the summer and that’s how you really improve,” Hannegrefs said. “Those kids have put in a lot of time to improve and I can’t wait to see how much they’ve grown.”

Nothing fully encapsulates the improvement from the team from Year 1 to Year 3 quite like its average team scoring per tournament. In their first season, the Sentinels averaged a 373.7 as a team per tournament, putting them 10th out of 12 teams and unable to qualify for state.

Just one year later, Minot North cut its average scoring down to 311.5, second-best in the conference. The Sentinels finished second at the WDA meet with a 327 and fifth at state with a 648 – the second-best score of a WDA team behind Century (634). They won three events that year and finished runners-up seven times.

It all led to last season’s record-breaking year, carding an average round of 303.6 to win the WDA regular season title. Their top three team scores all occurred last season. Its best round was a 288 at Fox Hills Golf Course in Watford City as part of the Bakken Classic.

The success hasn’t gone to Minot North’s head, as the Sentinels know that past success doesn’t automatically lead to future success.

“You need to know that you need to keep working,” Weishaar said. “Just because you won once doesn’t mean you’re going to win it again. You have to keep working. Everyone’s getting better, so you always need to get better.”

Mother Nature hasn’t been kind to the start of the golfing season, as the occasional snow storm coupled with cold temperatures have kept the Sentinels off the golf course and instead onto a simulator. Their season opener on Saturday, April 11, at the Century/Legacy Invite at Tom O’Leary Golf course, could serve as the first time they hit off grass this year. But Minot North isn’t all that concerned about their game in early April as long as they can be playing like last year’s group in roughly a month.

“Truth of the matter is it’s April,” Hannegrefs said. “If we’re not great right now, it’s OK because we’re going to learn and we’re going to get better. What I’m hoping we do is what we did last year which is get to the second week of May when the golf courses turn into green golf courses instead of brown golf courses then our game starts to round into shape. But our focus will be 125 yards and closer, really improving our short game. Putting is the fastest way to improve a score. Our wedge play, which is that 125 yards, we focused probably 75 percent of our practices on that last year and it seemed to have worked.”

With a state title and a WDA regular season title secured, the only thing missing on the resume is a conference tournament title. To do that, Minot North will have to dethrone Century, which has worn the crown for four straight years. The Sentinels finished just two shots back of the Patriots at the WDA meet last year.