Lady Mocs rise through the ranks led by de Groot
Jeremy Acree
Issue date: 4/16/09 Section: Sports
To understand how dedicated Emma de Groot is to golf, you may just need to look at where she came from. The UTC sophomore was born in Coffs Harbour in New South Wales, Australia, where she woke up to the sounds of the waves and routinely took a morning paddle out into the nearby Pacific Ocean.
In Australia she played soccer as well as golf, but there was no future for her in either sport in her native country.
"I knew I wanted to get a degree when I finish high school," de Groot said. "And in when you're in Australia there's not really much opportunity to go to school and play in school."
So the choice was made to come across the globe, to a place she had hardly heard of, much less been.
In Chattanooga Colette Murray was getting her first opportunity as a head golf coach. She graduated from Jacksonville State in 2004 where she had taken the same path as de Groot. Murray, a native of Dumfries, Scotland, had blindly chosen Jacksonville State as her American golf home and had stayed there a year after graduation to work as an assistant coach. She was hired by UTC in 2006 to restart a program that had been dormant for 20 years. But Murray didn't want to start the program until she had a year to establish a strong base.
"Recruiting is the key," Murray said. "I went to the AD [Steve Sloan] and said if I'm gonna do this I want to do it right. I don't want a half-ass effort."
The patience has paid off, and just two years into the program, UTC is ranked in the top 50 in the nation.
"I have 2.5 scholarships to work with, which is not going to get you anywhere," Murray said. "Every team in the top 100 has six scholarships, so I was always going to be behind the eight ball."
Murray understood what it took to get an international player into a program, though.
"When you're an international and you want to play golf, you don't know a lot about over here [in America]," Murray said. "If I had visited Jacksonville State I probably wouldn't have gone there, but it is easier to recruit international players because they don't know any better."
In Australia she played soccer as well as golf, but there was no future for her in either sport in her native country.
"I knew I wanted to get a degree when I finish high school," de Groot said. "And in when you're in Australia there's not really much opportunity to go to school and play in school."
So the choice was made to come across the globe, to a place she had hardly heard of, much less been.
In Chattanooga Colette Murray was getting her first opportunity as a head golf coach. She graduated from Jacksonville State in 2004 where she had taken the same path as de Groot. Murray, a native of Dumfries, Scotland, had blindly chosen Jacksonville State as her American golf home and had stayed there a year after graduation to work as an assistant coach. She was hired by UTC in 2006 to restart a program that had been dormant for 20 years. But Murray didn't want to start the program until she had a year to establish a strong base.
"Recruiting is the key," Murray said. "I went to the AD [Steve Sloan] and said if I'm gonna do this I want to do it right. I don't want a half-ass effort."
The patience has paid off, and just two years into the program, UTC is ranked in the top 50 in the nation.
"I have 2.5 scholarships to work with, which is not going to get you anywhere," Murray said. "Every team in the top 100 has six scholarships, so I was always going to be behind the eight ball."
Murray understood what it took to get an international player into a program, though.
"When you're an international and you want to play golf, you don't know a lot about over here [in America]," Murray said. "If I had visited Jacksonville State I probably wouldn't have gone there, but it is easier to recruit international players because they don't know any better."
