47th Gordy Skaar Memorial Golf Tourney Brings in Over $50,000 for BSU Scholarships

The 47th annual Gordy Skaar Memorial Golf Tournament took place Friday at the Bemidji Town & Country Club, where over $50,000 was raised from the day’s events.

The late Gordy Skaar founded the Skaar-Pabst Golf Tournament in 1977 to raise funds for Bemidji State University athletic scholarships through the BSU Athletics Fund. Fast forward to today, and the tournament has raised over $900,000.

That impact has not only been apparent in athletics, but also in the classroom, as BSU currently ranks in the 94th percentile in graduation rate among Division II schools.

“The alumni, people had this great life-changing experience at Bemidji State who keep coming back, and they invest to make sure that the next generation of Beavers continue to have that life-changing experience,” said BSU President John Hoffman. “And seeing the way that they are investing in our students, that’s the difference maker for me.

Gordy Skaar was a longtime Beaver athletic supporter, and his son Gordon Skaar knows he would be elated to see what his tournament has evolved into.

“Just so thankful and that – because my dad would have been so happy to be to see how it’s grown and what it’s done,” Gordon said. “He’d go to basketball practices and he never missed a game, whether it was a hockey game, basketball game, you know, following the golf team. The football games, he’d park his car when his health was bad and sit in the car and watch from the end zone. He didn’t miss an event.”

The tournament utilizes a scramble format, featuring five-person teams with shotgun starts in both the morning and afternoon. 150 participants and 32 teams took part in the tournament on Friday.