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BISMARCK (AP)-Same 11 letters, same spelling, same pronunciation. Yet the name Amy Anderson keeps growing and growing.
Anderson, a Red River Valley and Minnesota-North Dakota phenomenon as a teenager, expanded her horizons in college. At North Dakota State University, she won national acclaim with 20 victories, an NCAA Division I record.
During her career with the Bison, she won five tournaments in four straight seasons, breaking the previous Division I mark of 17 career wins by Juli Inkster at San Jose State.
In addition she ran the table in the Summit League, earning the conference’s player of the year award four times and became the first NDSU golfer to play in the NCAA Division I women’s tournament.
Anderson’s outstanding collegiate career caught the eye of the sporting press. She has won the North Dakota Associated Press Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association special achievement award. She was previously honored by the NDAPSSA as the non-school athlete of the year in 2010.
The late Ed Kringstad of Bismarck State College and Century High School girls athletics were also honored with special achievement awards.
Now it’s on to a professional career for Anderson. Her initiation as a play-for-pay golfer came earlier this month on the CN Women’s Tour.
Anderson tied for 13th in a tournament at Cowansville, Quebec with a four-over-par 148. She pocketed $3,000 in her first professional outing.
Signing with an agent and going pro is at once different and the same, according to the 21-year-old Anderson.
“It’s not college anymore, but it’s the same thing — the same swing, the same stroke. We’re just trying to improve on what we have,” she said.
“Being a professional golfer and making it on the LPGA has always been a goal of mine,” she added. “… I’ve been incredibly blessed. I’ve had a lot of success in the past and that’s good for my confidence. I can draw from that in the future.”
Anderson plans to play during the summer and enter the Ladies Professional Golf Association’s qualifying school in August. The qualifying school is the primary road to the LPGA tour.
Although playing professionally is new, Anderson said golf has been her job since she stepped onto the NDSU campus in 2009 as a freshman from nearby Oxbow.
“It’s been my job ever since high school, basically. When you struggle it’s not a whole lot of fun, but when you play well it’s all worth it,” she said. “… It’s one of the most rewarding sports when you do well. It’s so incredibly challenging.”
Anderson takes no credit for the fire and passion required to compete at an elite level.
“It’s inborn. I try to be the best I can be. No matter what I do, I work as hard as I can. … I guess growing up my parents always told me to work hard.”
Ed Kringstad
Be it as an athlete, coach, administrator, teacher or politician, Ed Kringstad was successful.
Yet it’s not the titles, but the man, that people remembered when Kringstad died in May at the age of 76.
“He could be shoveling dirt in the morning and be dressed in a tuxedo that night,” said Dee Bertsch, administrative assistant for athletics at Bismarck State College. “All the awards, all the traveling teams he took to international events, his time in the (North Dakota) Senate. You’d just never know that. The guy would be sitting with people having coffee at the truck stop
“He was just a guy from Hoople. I thought of him as part of my family. Losing him was hard.”
Kringstad coached and taught at BSC for 23 years, and most of that time served as athletic director. Bertsch joined the athletic department in 1990 and worked with Kringstad until his retirement from the college in 1999.
“He was my boss, but he was my mentor, too, no doubt about it,” Bertsch said. “… I was like a duck out of water coming into the athletic program, but he took me under his wing. I learned so much from him.”
Kringstad attended Valley City State where he lettered in five sports. He was graduated from Valley City with a bachelor’s degree and from the University of North Dakota with a master’s.
In 1965 he joined the staff at what was then Bismarck Junior College as a wrestling coach and teacher.
Kringstad’s Mystic wrestling teams finished in the top 10 14 times, including two runner-up finishes. He won three coach of the year awards and was named NJCAA wrestling man of the year in 1984. He was inducted into the NJCAA wrestling hall of fame in 1979.
Additionally, he managed 10 NJCAA wrestling tournaments in Bismarck beginning in 1990.
Three times he accompanied U.S. wrestling teams internationally, twice to the Junior Pan American Games and once to the Olympics.
Kringstad entered politics in 1995, serving two terms in the state senate.
Terry Kringstad, Ed’s younger brother, was on hand at the Civic Center for those national junior college wrestling tournaments.
Terry said he was one of a small army of people Ed assembled to run the national wrestling tournaments.
“He volunteered me. He volunteered a lot of people,” Terry recalled. “He had a pretty good following with the college and he did the leg work of getting the volunteers. It was no trouble getting them, it was just a matter of asking.”
Terry said that was just an outgrowth of Ed’s outgoing personality.
“He’d always say ‘hello’ to everybody. There was nobody he didn’t talk to,” Terry said.
Terry said Ed grew up hauling coal and picking potatoes. As a result, Ed contributed to BSC athletics with a hammer and shovel along with his other duties.
“He never turned down a challenge. He kind of bragged that he liked to do the unexpected,” said Terry, who played football at BJC in 1971.
Century girls athletics
Century grabbed more than its share of championship hardware during the 2012-13 school year, winning seven state titles.
Girls teams snapped up four championships — in volleyball, basketball, soccer and track. And CHS girls were also members of the state champion Bismarck Blizzard girls hockey team.
Senior Hannah Larson contributed heavily to three of those triumphant teams.
She was named Miss Basketball and Gatorade player of the year in the winter. In the fall she was the Miss Volleyball runner-up. In the spring she placed second in the high jump and triple jump and eighth in the long jump at the state track meet.
Larson, who intends to play basketball at the University of Mary, said she and her teammates never thought in terms of multiple championships.
“I don’t ever remember sitting down and thinking ‘we’re going to win three championships this year,’” she said. “You kind of take it one sport at a time. “In every sport you set goals at the beginning of the year. … Your goal should always be to win at the end.”
Track was the only sport in which Century was an obvious favorite at the outset. Graduation had taken a heavy toll on the state champion basketball team and the runner-up volleyball team.
“Nobody else thought we were going to be good. We lost seven people and that’s a lot of people to lose. We wanted to prove people wrong for both sports,” Larson said. “We had good people, even though they weren’t the same people.”
After coming close in 2011, Larson said the Patriots were especially eager to get another crack at the volleyball finals.
“That gave us motivation to get back,” she observed.
Larson said Ashley Bohrer, Jordyn Jossart and Katie Chase were her teammates on the championship volleyball, track and basketball teams.
Mikala Montgomery and Kylie Yineman competed on the championship track and hockey teams.
Larson said she was fortunate to attend Century during what will go down in history as a golden era of Patriot athletics.
“Obviously the Century girls have been really successful. … Sports in general have been strong, so we push each other. We want to be the best,” she said. “A lot of us train together in the summer, so it’s fun.”