Allan Christopherson

Allan Gregory Christopherson was a Minnesota math teacher and championship golf coach who spent nearly thirty years at Wayzata Public Schools, where he became one of the most recognizable and respected figures in the district. Born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and raised by parents who were both teachers, he earned a degree in mathematics education and coaching from Gustavus Adolphus College before beginning his career in Milaca, Minnesota, and later at Rochester John Marshall High School.

He joined Wayzata Public Schools in the 1998-99 school year and spent most of the following decades at Wayzata High School, where he taught mathematics and took on a series of leadership roles, including district math curriculum lead, a member of the building's instructional leadership team, and test-out coordinator, a role he held from 2011 until his death. He also coached extensively, leading girls basketball from 1998 to 2001 and boys basketball from 2002 to 2008 before taking over the boys golf program, which he led from 2009 to 2019 to state championships in 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2017, four titles in all.

Colleagues and former players described him as a central figure in the Wayzata athletic and academic community, someone whose influence reached well beyond any single classroom or team. The Wayzata boys golf program wrote on Instagram that the golf family had lost one of the greatest coaches in the history of the program and that he had impacted hundreds of young golfers over his career. He met his future wife, Tina, in 1994 while the two were teaching in Milaca, and they married in Brainerd, Minnesota, on January 1, 1999. Tina Christopherson also worked for Wayzata Public Schools for nearly three decades, and the couple were remembered together by district leaders as having given almost thirty years of service to the schools and students of the community.

Christopherson, 56, was killed on September 26, 2026, at his family's cabin near McKenzie Lake, about ten miles northwest of Spooner, Wisconsin. The Washburn County Sheriff's Office was dispatched to the property for a welfare check after a 911 caller reported that a man was having trouble with his son, who was described as acting erratically and believed to be using drugs. Deputies found Christopherson dead in the basement laundry room of the cabin. His son, Colton Douglas Christopherson, 25, of St. Michael, Minnesota, was subsequently charged in Washburn County Circuit Court with first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the stabbing death, and authorities allege he admitted to the killing and had planned to bury his father's body.

News of the death prompted an outpouring of tributes from the Wayzata school community. Principal Scott Gengler notified students and parents of Christopherson's death in a letter on September 28, withholding details of how he died, and praised the impact he and his wife had made on the district. His family has established the Christopherson Memorial Scholarship in his honor. A funeral service is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, 2026, at Word of Peace Lutheran Church in Rogers, Minnesota, to be followed by a celebration of life open house at Fox Hollow Golf Club.