When she left CSB in 2000, Heather Schmitt Johnson was the most accomplished and decorated golfer in the history of the program.
She capped her career with her third All-MIAC honor as a senior, while collecting her fourth straight Blazer MVP award.
As a junior in the 1998-99 season, she placed second at the MIAC tournament while leading the Blazers to a runner-up finish as a team for their third consecutive season. That same season, she set the CSB 18-hole record with a 78, the first player in program history to shoot sub-80. She was one of just two players in the field at the MIAC Championships to shoot both rounds in the 70s. Her 38 on the back nine on the first day was the second best nine-hole mark in the entire tournament.
She joined a team that had never finished higher than third at the MIAC Championships. It is no coincidence that her first year began the Blazers’ run of back-to-back-to-back runner-up tallies, still the most successful stretch in program history.
Coached by Theresa Solarz ’89, Schmitt Johnson quickly adjusted to collegiate competition as she became the first player in program history to qualify for the NCAA Tournament in her sophomore year of 1998. She remains the Blazers’ only four-time team MVP and was the first three-time All-MIAC player.
Her successes on the course seamlessly transferred off of it as well. She earned Academic All-American honors, graduated with a 3.6 grade point average and was a recipient of a president’s scholarship.
Schmitt Johnson grew up in Paynesville, Minn., and double majored in accounting and communication at CSB.
She has been married for 10 years to her husband, Michael Johnson (a Saint John’s University alumnus) and together they are raising three children in Red Wing, Minn.
In 1987, Saint Benedict added golf (along with track and field) to bring its athletics program to nine sports, and in 1991 the MIAC added women’s golf to its championships line-up, and now in 2013 Schmitt Johnson becomes the first golfer in the Blazer Athletics Hall of Fame.
