Owatonna girls golf wins section title

Owatonna girls’ golf continued its phenomenal 2025 season by winning the Section 1AAA team tournament just a week after earning a share of the Big Nine Conference championship.

The team was able to take down the competition by posting a cumulative score of 682 to beat out Northfield by 18 strokes.

“Our motto the whole season has been ‘Believe.’ We’ve known that this has been a dream or goal for the girls to get to state, so we’ve been working at it all season. They were firing off good scores at sections, but they were also so positive and had smiles on their faces. They did so well,” said Owatonna Head Coach Maddie Meyer.

The key to Owatonna’s success was a huge day from the top trio of Carmen Jirele, Paige Thompson and Danica Hager.

Owatonna’s returning state champion, Jirele, finished three strokes off of Northfield’s Katrina Johnson for the section title with a total score of 161.

Following closely behind Jirele was Thompson, who took fifth place with 167 strokes.

Thompson’s push into the top five was aided by a strong 81 on her second round.

Also cracking the top 10 was seventh-grader Hager, who finished in seventh with 170 total strokes.

Outside of Owatonna, no teams managed to have two top-five golfers, with Northfield being the lone other team to have two athletes inside of the top 10.

The Huskies’ win set the team up to compete at Bunker Hills Golf Course in Coon Rapids on the morning of Tuesday, June 10.

Owatonna will compete over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday with the potential to bring home the team’s first-ever state title.