The Raider boys golf team finished a great season with much improvement. The Raiders sent 6 kids to the State tournament at Meadowbrook Golf Course in Rapid City.
Coach Adam Dannenbring said, “The thing I will remember the most about the team this year is the great second day at the state tournament shooting a season low 306 team score.
The season started in early August and ended with the state tournament in early October. Senior, Colby Wit, one of the four seniors on the team said, “The highlight of my season for me was being able to have the state tournament at our home course. Most of my family was able to come and watch me play. I played my last 9 holes of my high school career two over par so it was nice for them to watch me play some good golf to finish out my last golf season.”
Cole Jansen, Levi Geary, Cohen Williams, Colby Wit, Weston Howard, and Jameson Neumann went to state for the Raiders. Overall, the boys finished in 9th place out of 18 teams, Geary led the team with a score of 12 over par through the two days of play, he placed tied for 23rd out of 110 kids.
Similar to Coach Dannenbring, Coach NickRotella said, “We did great at state, we came into the tournament ranked 15th andended up beating 6 teams ahead of us to finish 9th. Also, we shot our best score as a team of the whole season on day 2 of the tournament with a score of 306 strokes.”
Wit finished strong but is going to switch his focus after graduation, “I do not, I actually plan on shifting my focus to taking care of the course rather than playing on it…so I can follow in my dads footsteps.” Wit’s dad, Rick is the Golf Course Superintendent at The Golf Club at Red Rock in Rapid City.
Out of the 9 tournaments played this year, the average placement was 6th place.
The future for the Raiders golf team is very bright, Coach Rotella said, “I think we will be a very good team in years to come, we will only be losing 4 seniors from this year and only 1 was on the state team. We also have some very good middle school players who were sent to a middle school tournament in Pierre and finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the tournament.”
Results of tournaments this year are listed below:
Pierre 8/26/25 7th
Meadowbrook 8/28/25 3 teams, 4th, 7th, and 9th
Douglas 9/02/25 5th
Sturgis 9/08/25 4th
Yankton 9/12/25 9th
Hot Springs 9/15/25 3rd
Spearfish 9/16/25 1st
Mitchell 9/19/25 15th
Douglas 9/25/25 1st
State Tournament 10/06-07/25 9th