Thirty-two-year high school coach and Washburn graduate Jeff Stromgren is in his ninth season as head coach of the Ichabod golf team returning to Washburn as a coach prior to the 2012-13 season.
While at Washburn he has coached the Ichabods to 62 MIAA Academic Honor Roll selections, 11 all-MIAA golfers, three individual tournament champions and eight team championships. He has also coached the Ichabods to five NCAA regional appearances.
Stromgren, a head coach at Washburn Rural High School from 1993-2012, is a 1979 graduate of Washburn with a bachelor’s degree in education. He played basketball and golf for the Ichabods from 1977-79 and was the basketball team MVP in 1978-79. He also earned all-Central States Intercollegiate Conference as a guard that year.
Stromgren started his teaching and coaching career in 1980 at Meade High School in Meade, Kan., as head boy’s basketball coach and assistant football coach until 1982. He then coached from 1982 to 1989 at Winfield High School in Winfield, Kan., as head coach of the boy’s and girl’s golf teams and the boy’s basketball team.
He moved to Topeka in 1989 and started at Washburn Rural as head boy’s basketball coach until 1994. In 1993 he took over the girl’s golf program and in 1997 he headed the boy’s golf team and held those two positions for two years.
Stromgren won three 6A state titles at Washburn Rural (1997, 2005, 2008) and 17 city titles.
His Junior Blues teams finished in the top five in state 15 times and he had 25 league and 21 regional titles in his career. He was city coach of the year 19 times and state coach of the year in 2005.
Stromgren has coached more than 30 players who went on to play college golf including nine who played with NCAA Division I schools. Along with coaching, he also taught at each of the three high schools he’s worked at retiring from teaching after the 2012-13 school year.
Stromgren was born in Emporia, Kan., but grew up in Abilene. He’s a 1975 graduate of Abilene High School and he’s been married 39 years to his wife, Stephanie. They have two grown daughters, Whitney and Adin. Whitney played college golf at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Adin played at Wichita State.
Along with his degree from Washburn, he earned an associate’s degree in 1977 at Cowley County Community College and a master’s in education administration in 1988 from Southwestern College.
