BHS: Lumberjacks Scramble starts fall season

BEMIDJI - The Fall sports season teed off with the 21st annual Lumberjacks Scramble at Bemidji Town and Country Club on Friday.
The scramble marks the final weekend before the fall season gets in full swing with the new school year right around the corner.
“It’s kind of a great kickoff every single year,” said activities director and head football coach Troy Hendricks. “It’s a rarity that we’ve already started football, but it’s a kickoff for all the sports.”
Football is closing in on finishing up its first week of practice while the rest of the sports will start Monday.
One of those sports is boys soccer, which is looking to make a run at the state tournament in 2015.
“This is a group of kids that have been together for a lot of years,” said head coach Rick Toward. “They’ve got a lot of game experience at that high level, so we are hoping for good things.”
The Lumberjacks’ soccer team was beaten in overtime by Sartell-St. Stephen 2-1 in the Section 8A semifinals.
Sartell was then beaten 3-0 by St. Cloud Apollo, which went on to win the Class A state championship.
The rest of the fall sports are coming off strong seasons as well.
Girls soccer, girls tennis, boys and girls cross country and volleyball all had successful seasons.
Football, volleyball and girls swimming are all coming of section championship seasons and Friday was the swearing in of the first day of defending those titles.
“This event is always the signal to put the coach face back on,” Toward said. “Not that it ever really comes off anymore, but now it’s the sign that it’s time to move on and onto a new season. I’m excited about the new season.”
BHS has a lot to be excited about with the scramble.
It is one of two annual golf outings the district puts on and this is the bigger of the two.
“It generates a lot of money for us,” Hendricks said. “We generate about $60,000 between the two and this is the main one. We spend a great deal of that with coaches submitting foundation requests and rarely do those get turned away.
“It doesn’t pay for new uniforms, but short of that, it pays a lot.”
Another plus the scramble brings is an opportunity for the community to get involved and get their names out.
Between raffles, hole sponsors and event sponsors, many of the local businesses benefit with the school.
“We’ve got signs everywhere,” Hendricks said. “We’ve got food out there (on the course), which comes from the community. We are always doing something different with some of the raffle prizes including a paddle board from Bemidji Marine out there somewhere.”
The talk of the scramble however was David Knudson, who went home with a big prize, or better yet drove home.
Knudson, the father of boys’ golf coach Seth Knudson, shot a hole-in-one on the second hole and won himself a new Chevy Equinox. It was the first hole-in-one he had ever made.