2026 NSAA boys golf championships recap

By Tony Chapman, Chris Basnett and Terry Douglass – For the Nebraska School Activities Association

There was a little bit of everything at the Nebraska School Activities Association state golf tournaments that brought the 2025-26 school year championships to a close on May 28.

In Class A, defending champion Lincoln East held off a bold run early from Creighton Prep on Thursday to win its second title in a row. At Scottsbluff in Class B, Bennington shook off a two-stroke deficit from Wednesday to cruise to its first title in school history.

At Grand Island’s Indianhead Golf Club, there was drama. Archbishop Bergan needed one extra hole to beat Adams Central in a team playoff after both schools shot Class C state tournament record scores of 591. In Class D, Creighton’s second-day 315 led to a 40-shot win in a dominant repeat title.

Class A: East holds off Prep while Honnens takes gold

The final scores would suggest there wasn’t much drama on the final day of the Class A boys state golf championships.

Lincoln East won the team title by six shots at Kearney’s Meadowlark Hills Golf Course. The Spartans’ Carter Honnens won the individual crown by five.

But winning a championship is never easy, and East survived an incredible front-nine charge from Omaha Creighton Prep before pulling away again over the final few holes to win its second consecutive title.

If last year’s championship came as a surprise, this year’s was a coronation. East and Prep were the top two teams in the state all season, and those two ran away from the rest of the field on Thursday.

“I don’t know that they really got tight at all,” East coach Lee Plath said of his players. “They kind of knew what they needed to do, and were maybe a little frustrated with missing a couple putts and (Prep) getting back into it.”

East entered the final round with a one-shot lead over Elkhorn South and a seven-shot advantage on Prep. But the Junior Jays produced one of the best nine-hole scores in state history to not only erase East’s lead, but take a one-shot lead of their own early in the back nine.

Prep’s four scoring golfers played 25 holes on the front nine before making anything worse than a par, at one point getting to 10-under as a team before making the turn in 9-under 135.

That run shaved six shots off East’s lead, and after East played the par-4 10th hole in a combined 4-over, the Spartans were staring at a one-shot deficit.

But East stayed steady. The Spartans played the 12th through 14th holes in 4-under, eight shots better than they scored on the same stretch during Wednesday’s first round, to reestablish control.

“We played that stretch really well today, and that gave us a little boost of momentum going forward,” Plath said. “It took us into that final stretch of 16, 17, 18, and we were hitting good shots, so it worked out.”

It worked out well for Honnens too, as the junior won his first individual state championship.

A third-place finisher at state last season, Honnens began his tournament by making four consecutive birdies Wednesday and cruising home with a 66 that gave him a one-shot lead over teammate Zack Erstad.

The two were briefly tied early in the second round before Honnens took his lead to three shots with an eagle at the par-5 sixth hole.

“I just want to shout out the team too, because the guys on our team, we compete every day. So competing with them for the past couple months has definitely helped me as a player so much,” said Honnens, who won six tournaments this season. “Individually, it’s really cool. It’s not like everybody wins a state championship.”

Honnens’ two-day total of 8-under 134 is tied for the second-lowest 36-hole total since the state championship moved to two rounds 30 years ago, in 1996, and his first-round 66 is tied for the second-lowest 18-hole score at state and the lowest state tournament round since 2014. Honnens has fired four consecutive under-par rounds at the state tournament.

Erstad finished in a tie for second with Creighton Prep’s Harper Kalin, five shots back, and 2025 champion Max Moss tied for eighth to give the Spartans three golfers in the top 10.

It is Lincoln East’s 15th boys golf championship, tying Oakland-Craig and Lincoln Southeast for the second-most in state history. Lincoln High’s 18 titles lead the way. Honnens’ title also gave the Spartans 11 individual champions, also tied for second-most all time.

Class B: Bennington, Jochum on top for first time

For most of the spring, Bennington golf coach Craig Nichols preached “steady golf” to his team. So it was appropriate then that his Badgers used that formula on Thursday to win their first-ever Class B state golf championship at Scotts Bluff Country Club.

The team leader in scoring average for the majority of the season, the Badgers found themselves trailing Lincoln Pius X by two shots (305-307) after opening-round play on Wednesday. It was a strong start to the second round, and playing the difficult stretch of holes 4-6, that gave Bennington some breathing room on the field.

“We really thought we were in a good spot yesterday, being down two to Pius,” Nichols said. “In our mind we thought Norris and Scottsbluff and Pius would be the teams there. Pius had an outstanding day yesterday.

“We just wanted to stay in it and be patient and not make any big numbers.”

The three-hole stretch, all difficult par-4s, played 2.64 shots over par for the field. On Thursday, the Badgers made no worse than bogey, playing the 12 holes in 8-over par. Pius was 11-over in that stretch and, coupled with the Badgers’ 1-under start on the opening three holes, they had made up nine shots by the seventh tee box.

“We thought if we could just get through those three holes and not have huge numbers we would be in pretty good shape,” Nichols added. “We just wanted to clean that up a little bit. To have the kids do it and stay in it like that, we are just super proud of them.”

In their second-round 302, Bennington counted just one hole worse than bogey the entire day.

Norris, who finished second to Elkhorn North a season ago, bounced back from an opening 317 to shoot 304 on Thursday to once again finish second. The Titans have been in the top two each year since the tournament moved to Scottsbluff-Gering in 2022. Landon Moore, Cooper Rice and Cale Baker all earned medals for the Titans.

If the Badgers were steady for two days, the poster child was individual champion Austin Jochum. The sophomore fired rounds of 73 and 71 to claim individual honors by six shots over Nebraska commit Jaxson Hinze of York.

Jochum birdied the third hole early in his round before back-to-back bogeys on four and five. But he played 2-under golf the rest of the way with 12 pars and two birdies to breeze to the championship.

“He’s an easy guy to cheer for,” Nichols said of his champion. “He just plays steady, steady golf and that was what he was able to do the last few days.”

Class C: Bergan edges Adams Central in team playoff; KC’s Malone repeats

How good was the Class C state golf tournament at Grand Island’s Indianhead Golf Club on Thursday? Good enough that Archbishop Bergan broke 300 twice and set the Class C state tournament two-day scoring record.

And yet, the Knights still needed a playoff to top hard-charging Adams Central for the team title.

“It was so wild,” Archbishop Bergan coach Chris Rainforth said. “Adams Central was so good, oh my gosh. Coming into today, I felt pretty good because we felt like a team was going to have to go really, really low to catch us. And, they did.

“But, our kids made enough ‘plays’ to get us over the hill.”

Drama oozed out of the final few holes if you were following the live scoring on your phone. The last four groups featured two Adams Central players, Brenson Underwood and Braden Dyer, and three from Bergan, Trey Mooney, Jackson Luebbe and Boston Bojanski.

First, Underwood birdied his final two holes to post the round of the tournament with a 67. It briefly gave AC a two-shot lead. When Dyer bogeyed 17 and Mooney made a putt from beyond 30 feet on the last, the team race was back to a tie.

Then, Luebbe had a chance to give Bergan the lead with an 8-foot birdie that just missed, setting up the final hole with Dyer and Bojanksi. Both reached the green and two-putted, with Bojanksi missing an eagle putt from about 12 feet that could have ended the proceedings.

Bergan controlled the playoff.

“This was our same top-five that we had last year,” Rainforth said of the 2025 state runner-up team. “So, we had been in one of these before. When they found out, they were excited. They are competitors. They just went out and played hacky sack before we teed off. They were confident and got the job done.”

Bojanski made a birdie in the playoff that set the tone as the Knights played Indianhead’s 10th hole in even par to AC’s 2-over.

“A completely new experience for our guys,” Adams Central coach Rod Hartman said. “We have been in some individual playoffs, but that was a fun deal to end it. Every shot counts. Unfortunately, it didn’t go quite the way we wanted it to at the end. I think if you told me last night we’d be in the situation we were at the end of today I would have been very surprised.”

“We told the guys that we didn’t have to do anything crazy and to just go out and play and see what happened.”

But, what a day it was for the Patriots, whose even-par 288 team score set a Class C single-day tournament record. Underwood’s 67 tied for the second-lowest single-day individual score in Class C history.

Bergan’s title keeps the Class C title in the Centennial Conference for the 12th consecutive tournament, with Gibbon’s 2013 team the last non-member school to win the state tournament.

“I am just so happy for them,” Rainforth said. “This group of kids has put in a lot of time over the course of the last few years. To see all of that payoff for them, I am just really happy for them.”

Kearney Catholic’s Nash Malone repeated as the individual champion with a steady Thursday after his 4-under-par 68 set the pace on the opening day. He saw Sutton freshman Myles Smith tie briefly on the front nine, but he never trailed, recording 15 pars, two birdies and a single bogey in his final round, finishing on 5-under-par 139.

“It feels really good to do it (again),” Malone said. “Yesterday was just steady, and then I got hot on the back nine. Any time you can get 15 pars in a round like today you will take that. A few more birdies would have been nice, but you can’t complain about how the tournament went.”

Class D: Creighton wins in dominant repeat; Red Cloud’s Armstrong takes individual gold

Creighton’s performance in the NSAA Class D Boys Golf Championships was so dominant that even coach Erik Burns appeared caught off guard by the Bulldogs’ 40-stroke victory.

A season-best 315 in the second round Thursday at Quail Run Golf Course powered Creighton to a two-day, 36-hole total of 637, well ahead of second-place Red Cloud (677). It marked the second consecutive state team title for the Bulldogs, who won with a 683 in 2025.

“We didn’t expect that, obviously,” Burns said. “(Wednesday), I said let’s position ourselves to maybe get that back-to-back (opportunity). Today, it was, ‘Let’s go out and make a statement,’ and the boys did.”

Burns was also surprised when his players celebrated by dousing him with water bottles during a post-tournament TV interview.

“It was very refreshing after a couple of long days,” Burns said of the impromptu shower. “The boys battled hard. They came through and they played clutch golf — you couldn’t ask for more than what they did.”

Creighton’s depth proved difficult for Class D teams to match. Calvin Wilmes placed second with a 3-over 147 and teammate Teegan Burns also medaled, finishing tied for 13th at 159. Ethan Kuhlman (T20 at 163), Haiden Horstmann (T29 at 171) and Ethan Kuhl (49th at 179) rounded out the Bulldogs’ lineup.

Wilmes, who was the defending state medalist, opened with a 79 on Wednesday, but made a second-round charge with a 4-under-par 68 before falling two shots shy. The Creighton senior produced the best round of the tournament, making four consecutive birdies on holes 5-8.

“With Calvin, you never know because he can get hot,” Burns said. “To see him put four birdies in a row together, that was impressive. And our other kids heard about it and it lifted their confidence as well.”

The surge by Wilmes wasn’t quite enough to catch Lukas Armstrong. The Red Cloud senior, who was fourth in Class D last year, shot a steady even-par 72 to finish at 145 and win by two.

Despite getting up and down from the fringe to make par on the final hole, Armstrong’s celebration after locking up the tournament was subdued, at least on the outside.

“There’s a lot of emotion, actually,” Armstrong said. “I don’t think I’m going to stop smiling for quite some time.”

Armstrong offset three second-round bogeys with birdies on holes 3, 10 and 14. He said that long par-saving putts on Nos. 6 and 13 helped him maintain his confidence, and the lead.

“My goal was to win it,” Armstrong said. “I’m not going to say I didn’t believe in myself enough to win it, but at the same time, it’s a long shot. There were a lot of good players out here, who wanted to win it. I guess I just wanted it more than everyone else.”