MUKILTEO — Team Panda, comprised of local award-winning golfers with competitive résumés spanning high school, college and amateur levels captured the title at the second annual Mukilteo Fire and Police Foundation Charity Golf Tournament on Friday, finishing 19 under par. The event raised tens of thousands of dollars towards programs supporting the mental, physical and emotional resiliency of Mukilteo police and fire personnel.
Team Panda, consisting of Scott Strand, Amanda Strand, Luke Strand, Mark Strickland and Nick Ennis, posted the winning score at Harbour Pointe Golf Club. The fundraising tournament was hosted by the Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival with its main sponsor Karman Space & Defense, drew 132 golfers, nearly matching the 136 participants from the previous year.
“This tournament’s great. I mean, we’re two for two. That’s fun to win, but it’s also for a good cause. There’s nothing better. We all live right here, so it’s home track, supporting the community. I mean, it doesn’t get better than this,” said Mark Strickland, a Mukilteo resident and 2010 Kamiak High School graduate.
Scott Strand, who played alongside his family and friends, shared that he and his sons have been playing for approximately 15 years.
“We’ve been golfing quite a while,” Scott told the Lynnwood Times. “In a tournament like this, you can come out with family and friends and just play because it’s a friendly format and that sort of thing. We just like to have fun, but we compete too, and we’ll be back out here supporting next year too.”
Luke Strand, a Mukilteo native and Kamiak graduate, added that the sport “gets us all together.”
He has competed at the collegiate club level for Grand Canyon University’s men’s golf team in the National Collegiate Club Golf Association. As a junior in the 2025-26 season, following freshman and sophomore campaigns, he recorded a career-low round of 72 and an average score near 77 across roughly 10 tournaments. His performances in Desert Region events have included rounds in the 72–78 range at courses such as the GCU Golf Course and Boulder Creek.
Strickland brings an extensive amateur record after starring at Western Washington University from 2010 to 2015. In college he claimed medalist honors at the 2012 WWU Invitational with a 7-under 209. As an amateur he won the 2012 Everett Amateur Championship with a tournament-record-tying 8-under 136, finished runner-up at the Snohomish County Amateur the same year, medaled at a 2014 U.S. Amateur qualifier to reach the national championship, qualified for the 2018 U.S. Mid-Amateur, and captured the 2021 Pacific Northwest Golf Association Men’s Mid-Amateur title in a playoff. He comes from a three-generation golfing family.
Nick Ennis, from nearby Everett and a graduate of Archbishop Murphy High School, posted top-six finishes of fourth and sixth at the WIAA 2A State Tournament in his junior and senior seasons. After a strong freshman year at Saint Martin’s University—where he competed in every event, won the South Sound Cup and finished in the top 10 at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championship—he transferred to Western Washington University. At WWU he earned All-GNAC First Team honors, tied for second individually at the 2025 GNAC Championships with an even-par 213, maintained scoring averages near even par to 2 over, and contributed to the Vikings’ NCAA regional and national appearances.
Mukilteo Fire Chief Glen Albright said the funds from the tournament will help firefighters when they are away from the job site.
“And with the money that’s raised, we’ll put money back into helping support our firefighters,” Albright told the Lynnwood Times. “The big thing that Chief Illyn and I are both pushing this year is resiliency and really trying to take care of our folks and see if there’s ways that we could help invest into them away from the job site so that they can mentally and physically recoup and then come back stronger to serve the community.”
Mukilteo Police Chief Andy Illyn outlined a shift in wellness focus for 2027.
“So last year we kind of focused more on recovery of wellness,” Illyn told the Lynnwood Times. “[Last year] we hired a wellness coordinator and for 2027, my goal is less on recovery, more about resiliency. How do we make sure that when people are coming in to the department, they’re in the right mindset, you know? And so part of that is how do we expand on our wellness retreats? We’re looking at doing couples counseling, we’re looking at also starting a wellness dog and then some hardship loans too where life happens. And this way if someone comes into work, they’re not focused on their debts or some of the other things that happen. They can focus solely on the victim.”
Illyn also addressed the importance of taking a whole-family approach to resiliency and wellness.
“There’s a lot of stress in the job,” he added. “And it takes so much energy to stay professional at work. And then oftentimes you go home and around the people you should care the most about, that’s when you drop your guard. And sometimes you inadvertently offload your stress to your spouse, to your kids, which really is the last people you should be doing it to.”
Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival President Megan Reed shared that the organization chose the wellness focus for its second year of the tournament after concentrating on water safety in 2025.
“So, I think we just want to reach out more into the community and do more things for nonprofits,” Reed said. “So, we actually are looking at starting a new nonprofit that’s called Mukilteo Collaborative that will allow us to take what we are experts at, which is planning events and, you know, fundraising, making money and push that out to any nonprofit starting, existing that needs somebody like us to do events like this. We just want to raise money for nonprofits and we just started the farmers market back again this year huge.”
Treasurer Kattrina Cervantes personally thanked Karman Space & Defense for their strong sponsorship support this year.
“Karman Space & Defense was our main sponsor this year. They were incredible in giving us a very generous donation and it really helped us kind of push the event outwards and it really kind of picked us up at the top this year,” Cervantes said.
Last year the festival provided a $22,000 check each to the Fire Foundation and the Police Foundation after covering food, course fees, advertising and other expenses. The auction alone raised about $17,000 in 2025. This year the auction stood around $11,000 during the event.
The Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival, scheduled for Sept. 11-13, will feature fireworks on Saturday night, line dancing with a country band on Friday and a full entertainment lineup.
Participants at the golf tournament enjoyed contests and prizes. Mukilteo council members Jason Moon, Richard Emery and Bob Champion also participated in the tournament to support local first responders.
Author: Mario Lotmore
