J-Club Hall of Honor | Event Registration

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - Clint Dammann remembers the moment well.

It came just after he'd arrived at Saint John's University as a freshman in the fall of 2004 and had gathered with his new teammates on the Johnnie golf team.

"There were 10 or 12 of us in the room, and I counted at least eight of who'd been ranked in the state at some level in high school," said Dammann, himself a four-time state meet qualifier at Glencoe-Silver Lake High School. "It was a pretty solid group of dudes sitting there and I was just thinking to myself 'How do I stack up?'"

Pretty darn well as it turns out. 

Dammann was a two-time All-MIAC performer - finishing eighth at the conference meet as a freshman in the fall of 2004 and sixth as a junior in the fall of 2006. But his SJU career was really defined by four amazing days in May in the spring of his junior year in 2007.

That was when Dammann caught fire, shooting a four-round score of 287 to earn medalist honors at the NCAA Division III national meet in Fishers, Indiana. 

His score was eight strokes better than Huntingdon University's Jacob Collinsworth and Otterbein College's Andy Miller, who tied for second place with scores of 295, and the performance helped lead the Johnnies to their first team national championship with a score of 1,204.



"The way he was playing rubbed off on all of us," said Joe Schoolmeesters, who was a sophomore that season and earned MIAC player of the year honors. "Clint had a really good freshman year, but his sophomore season, he struggled a little bit with his swing. He didn't let it get to him though. He came back as a junior and you could see his confidence just continue to grow. It all led up to the performance he turned in those four days.

"Seeing the way he was playing made the rest of us much more confident. He helped lift us all up."

Two moments from that tournament stand out to then-SJU head coach Bob Alpers. 

The first came on the opening day of play.

"He pulled a drive into the bunker on a difficult hole where you had to carry over water," Alpers said. "He looked at me and said he was going to hit it out straight to yardage and make par. That's something a lot of young guys don't have the confidence to do. It takes a lot of guts to knock it straight out instead of going for the green. But he did it and made par just like he said he would. 

"Then, on the last day, there was a lot of pressure because he was in the lead. He asked me if I wouldn't mind hanging out with him for the first couple of holes. He bogied the first one and I put my arm around him and told him that was the toughest hole of golf he'd ever play in his life - that it would all get easier from there. He birdied one of the next holes, got back to par, and told me he was good now and I could go pester some of the other guys. That's when I knew he had it under control."

Dammann, meanwhile, said he will always remember standing atop the podium afterward.

"I think my main reaction was disbelief," he said. "I couldn't believe it had actually happened. So there was that mixed with pure joy and excitement. We knew how much it meant to the program and the school. It was just amazing to be part of that."

Dammann was back the following season, helping the Johnnies overcome an eight-stroke deficit to repeat as champions at the 2008 Division III national meet in Braselton, Georgia.

"Individually, I didn't have a great senior year," Dammann recalled. "I had some cool amateur experiences in the summer going into that year that the national title had qualified me for. But once the season started, I wasn't playing very well. I felt a lot of pressure individually to perform as the reigning national championship. 

"But we had such a solid team and that season was still so much fun to be part of."

Even if he wasn't playing at the top of his game, Schoolmeesters said Dammann still meant a lot to the team's success.

"Clint was the epitome of hard work and he helped set the tone," Schoolmeesters said. "He never gave up. He always kept working harder and harder. And outside of golf, he was just a great person. He was one of my best friends then and still is today."

"He had an unbelievable ability to bounce back from adversity and that's the greatest attribute an athlete or anybody else can have," Alpers added. "His persistence was incredible.

"What I'll always remember most about him, though, is his work ethic and how detailed he was in his preparation. And aside from that, how good a person he was. He was a guy you knew you could count on and he was so much fun to be around. When you have the success he had, it can sometimes change you. But that never happened with Clint. He always stayed the same great guy."

Dammann was just grateful to have the chance to play a game he'd long loved at the collegiate level.

"The story goes I first picked up a golf club when I was a toddler," Dammann said. "It's before I can remember, but apparently there was an old three or five-wood in the garage that was like triple my size. But I picked it up, started swinging and the rest was history. 

"It wasn't like my parents or anyone else in the family were really golfers. But, for whatever reason, I took to the sport. It became all I thought about. It was my daycare growing up. So to go on and have the chance to play at a place like Saint John's was a really incredible experience."

Dammann and his wife now reside in Hortonville, Wisconsin where the father of four is the director of operations for an engineering service company. 

But he still looks back fondly on his time in Collegeville, and the great teams he had the chance to be part of.

"The sense of accomplishment is something I always go back to," he said. "You carry a little bit of pride with you when you accomplish the things we did. Anyone who says they don't would be lying. But more than that, look at what that success created for all of us. It helped lead to successful careers and it formed friendships that have lasted to this day. I'm super proud to say I was a part of that group of guys."

2026 Hall of Honor Class 
The 2026 class will be inducted into the Saint John's University J-Club Hall of Honor in a ceremony scheduled for Homecoming Saturday – Oct. 17 - in Guild Hall (Old Gym). 

The dinner and enshrinement ceremony begins at 5 p.m. in Guild Hall (Old Gym). A Homecoming Celebration social will again take place outside the venue from 4-5 p.m. following SJU's football game against Concordia in Clemens Stadium prior to the dinner and program. 

Registration is $75 per person before Oct. 11 ($100 per person after) and includes dinner and beverages. Children ages 6-12 are $35 and those ages six-and-under are free. All proceeds go to the J-Club to support SJU athletics.

To register to attend, click here. 

-2026 J-Club Hall of Honor Class: Jim Holmes '69
-2026 J-Club Hall of Honor Class: Dave Arnold '73
-2026 J-Club Hall of Honor Class: 2026 J-Club Hall of Honor Class: Fr. Otto Weber, OSB '57
-2026 J-Club Hall of Honor Class: 1968 Cross Country Team
-10 Johnnies to Join J-Club Hall of Honor on Sept. 27