Having Won 2 More Titles, Herzog Retires as Red Wing Coach

June 13, 2019 | 4 min.

By Mike Fermoyle (mikefermoyle@gmail.com)

On Wednesday, the Red Wing High School girls golf team won its sixth state team championship. The Wingers also claimed the top two spots in the individual competition, Sophia Yoemans winning her third consecutive state title, and Leah Herzog finishing second for the second year in a row. All of which followed the naming of Herzog as the 2019 Minnesota Ms. Golf on Sunday night.

It was about as good a week as a team could have, and on Thursday the Wingers' coach for the last 30 years, Mark Herzog, announced that he was resigning.

"I just thought it was a perfect time to exit," he said.

Herzog, who is 59, had told the players on the team about the resignation immediately after the conclusion of the Class AA portion of the state tournament on Wednesday at Ridges at Sand Creek. 

The record-keeping for Minnesota high school golf tends to be hit and miss; so it can be difficult to make historical comparisons. But all things considered, Herzog might very well be the most successful golf coach in the state's history. 

Just look at the numbers:

The state team championship that the Wingers  won this year was their sixth. Three of them came in succession, 2001-03, in what was then the large-school class -- AA. The last three have come in what is now AA, the class for schools in the middle range of enrollments, under the state's three-class system (which went into effect in 2008).

Red Wing has also been runner-up five times at the state tournament. 

Herzog became the Wingers" head coach in 1990, and it took him a while to build a team that could contend for section and state championships. The Wingers won their first section title -- and qualified for their first state tournament -- in his ninth year, 1998. They missed the next year, but they have won section championships in 19 of the last 20 years, including the last 13 in a row. 

He has coached 15 section individual champions, and 17 section runner-ups -- and 132 state  qualifiers!

The one thing that was missing on his resume for a long time was an individual state champion, but Yoemans put a check in that box two years ago, when she tied for medalist honors in the Class AAA portion of the state tournament at Bunker Hills GC.

Red Wing then dropped back into AA for the 2018 season, and Yoemans and Leah Herzog, Mark's daughter, put on a spectacular show. Leah set a tournament record by shooting a 6-under-par 66 at Ridges in the first round, but Yoemans, playing in the foursome right behind her, broke the record with a 9-under 63. Yoemans followed that with a 66 and shattered the 36-hole record with a 129. It could be a long time before anyone matches or beats that. Leah ended up with a 66-71--137, which would have won in any other year -- but she finished eight strokes behind her teammate, and best friend. 

This year, Leah became the second Herzog girl to win the Ms. Golf Award. Her sister Stephanie won it two years ago. But it was Yoemans who prevailed in the state tournament once again, winning the AA crown with a pair of 69's for an aggregate of 138. Leah was second once again with a 145.

The Red Wing teammates also set records with their season totals. In all, they played 19 competitive rounds. Leah was 40 under par for those rounds, and Yoemans was 33 -- for a combined total of 73 under! No pair of teammates, male or female, have ever come close to those numbers. 

"It was an unbelievable season," Mark Herzog marveled. "Sophie and Leah playing the way they did, shooting the scores they did, finishing 1-2 at the state tournament, and the team winning a state championship. As a coach, you just couldn't ask for any thing more than that." 

Here's another statistic that the Wingers' coach is proud of: 24 of his Red Wing alumnae have gone on to play college golf. That doesn't count the two stars from this year's team. Yoemans will attend the University of Missouri on a golf scholarship, beginning this fall, and Leah Herzog has a golf scholarship waiting for her at Nebraska.

Yet another notable part of Herzog's coaching legacy is the Red Wing Invitational, a tournament that he organized and ran each year. It has had the strongest fields of the the Minnesota girls high school season for more than two decades. Virtually all of the state's best players have competed in the tournament since the mid-90's. Hilary Homeyer won it in 1997, six years before she won the U.S. Women's Open (under her married name -- Hilary Lunke). Katie Detlefson, who won a then-record four state championships while she was at Minnehaha Academy, played in the Red Wing Invitational, and so did Kate Smith, the Detroit Lakes star who broke Detlefson's record by winning five in a row.

New Prague's Kenzie Neisen, Wayzata's Sarah Burnham (who is now on the LPGA Tour) and Cretin-Derham Hall's Celia Kuenster, the three girls who made the Class of 2014 Minnesota's best ever, all played in Red Wing, and so did the star of the Class AAA portion of this year's state tournament -- Isabella McCauley of Simley.  
  

 

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