This year, the Seton Hall women's golf program is celebrating its 10th Anniversary. This is the third of a three-part series celebrating the history of one of Seton Hall's most-successful programs. The writer, Justin Sousa, is the current sports editor of The Setonian, and a contributor to SHUpirates.com.
By Justin Sousa
THE end of the 2016-17 college women's golf season meant much more than just the end of another season for Seton Hall. At the end of that season, then head coach Sara Doell had a difficult decision to make, stay at the program she built from the ground up or take on the challenge of another dream opportunity coaching at the University of San Francisco.
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After seven years with the Pirates, she knew she had done what she could and needed to get the program at a level where they could consistently compete for a conference title year after year. It wasn't easy to let go of one of the most talented group of players she had put together as head coach at Seton Hall, but Doell's final weeks at Seton Hall were filled with tough phone calls to her players informing them of the news that she would be going to San Francisco.
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Doell didn't get the fairytale fourth consecutive title ending to her time at Seton Hall as maybe her and her players would have wanted, but she had written a sustainable introduction for the program to build on in its next chapter. That chapter, as it turned out, would be written by Natalie Desjardins, then the head coach of the women's golf team at LIU-Brooklyn.
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Desjardins took on the role as the Seton Hall women's golf program's second-ever head coach after six years of coaching the Blackbirds. During her time there as head coach, she won three consecutive Northeast Conference titles, brought the team to three NCAA Tournaments and won the NEC Coach of the Year award in 2012.
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Now, Desjardins was ready to make the next step in her coaching career in leaving her alma mater and building on the foundations of Seton Hall's program.
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"It's always a challenge going into a program that's young but rich in success," Desjardins said. "I know coach Doell did a great job in those seven years to turn the program into one of the most successful programs on campus. I love a challenge, I don't scare away from a challenge, and I knew it would be a challenge to walk into a program to continue to build on the foundation that Doell and her teams had built for the program."
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Head Coach Natalie DesjardinsA NEW ERA
Year one for Desjardins was heavily focused on culture building, much like Doell had to do when initially constructing the program. She knew the team had the potential to become a top 50 program in the country and, on top of wanting to win a BIG EAST title, set that as one of her long-term goals to achieve while at Seton Hall. Maintaining the team's standard of success was the obvious necessity in taking over as head coach, but the next to step in strengthening the program's prestige was to earn a consistent top 50 spot.
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The team finished Desjardin's first tournament as head coach in third at the William & Mary Intercollegiate, the first of their five top-five finishes that season. Their first team win came at the Brown Bear Invitational with Mia Kness, Maddie Sager and Lizzie Win sweeping the first, second and third place individual finishes as well. The team recorded the lowest single-round score in Seton Hall history on the first day of that tournament and shot just one stroke more the next day for the second-lowest single-round score in program history.
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They would open the spring portion of their season with another first-place finish at the Rio Verde Invitational, earning the program's 12th tournament title and it's first-ever set of back-to-back tournament wins.
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"That first year, I thought we had a breakthrough," Kness said. "We had a great fall, and we took that with us into the spring. In the BIG EAST, we came up a little short, but that first year for Seton Hall's women's golf and coach Natalie was our breakthrough year. We have not looked back since. We keep breaking all the team and individual records, and it's been fun going into each tournament thinking that we could break another one."
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Kness was named the 2018 BIG EAST Freshman of the Year that season and was named to the All-BIG EAST Team and All-BIG EAST Tournament Team.
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Seton Hall would ultimately finish second at the 2017/18 BIG EAST Tournament, but Desjardins walked away from that first season knowing she was slowly striking gold with the team. Her emphasis on intensifying individual and team practices slightly tapped into the potential her young team had. Not afraid to tweak with her coaching methodology, though, Desjardins began to look for external contributors to tap into the intangible aspects of an athlete's skill set.
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As a result, Bryan Price and Kim Polivko were brought on board to help strengthen the team's mental conditioning and provide different approaches to tapping into those intangibles.
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Price, the executive director of the Buccino Leadership Institute at Seton Hall, initially stuck out to Desjardins while speaking at a leadership conference at Seton Hall. Desjardins agreed with his view on the importance of visualization in life and sports, opening the door for Price to become a somewhat of a mental coach for the team in year two. The team meets with Price once a month, and the option to pursue individual sessions is also open for the players to get a more personalized approach to the mental side of their game.
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Kim Polivko, a volunteer assistant coach and yoga instructor, has grown to become an outlet for players as much as an instructor for them during yoga sessions. Her techniques and sessions physically destress the team, but her increased time and involvement with the team has also seen her develop a strong personal relationship with the players and coaching staff.
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"Coach Natalie really emphasizes the mental side of our game," Kness said. "We've been seeing Dr. Price, and all have a totally different way of looking at the game now. Even her practices, we don't just go out there and bang balls for three hours, she actually has us do specific drills for specific individuals for how we can better our game. She really takes the time to create a practice based on individual needs."
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With her first opportunity to begin her own recruitment process as well, Desjardins began to introduce international players to the roster.
Senior Mia Kness
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For the entirety of Doell's coaching tenure at Seton Hall, the women's golf team had solely been comprised of golfers from the United States, but Desjardins wanted to utilize the prestige the school had built for itself as a women's golf program and reputable destination to pursue secondary education to extend her reach. In doing so, Desjardins believes she is providing her players with more practical real-world experiences in working with people of different backgrounds and cultures while also strengthening her team year after year.
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"I've expanded the horizons a little bit and started recruiting internationally," Desjardins said. "I always think that personal growth benefits from getting to know an outsider's perspective and how they live in different cultures. I think that's also part of being a collegiate athlete, adapting on the fly, learning other cultures and growing within the program and the sport."
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The team has since recruited two players form Spain – Maria Contreras Luna and Carolina Ronchel Salas – and two players from Italy – Ginevra Ricciardelli and Ludovica Busetto. Salas, who returned to Seton Hall for the 2020-21 season as a graduate student, also finished the 2018-19 season with All-BIG EAST Tournament Team and All-BIG EAST Team honors.
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That second season saw the team go one better than the year before, finishing in the top five of six tournaments they competed in and claiming first place at the Delaware Lady Blue Hen Invitational and William & Mary Intercollegiate.
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Win arguably had her best season at Seton Hall that year, leading Seton Hall and sitting second among all BIG EAST golfers with a 74.92 scoring average. She also set a new Seton Hall record for lowest scoring average in a single-year and won All- BIG EAST Team and All- BIG EAST Tournament Team honors.
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"Coach Natalie and Coach Doell have very different coaching styles, but they're two different coaching styles that are necessary for good players because they look at the life-coaching side of things and the technical golf side of things," Win said. "The change in coaches was mentally tough on us because we had no idea how we'd handle it, but it's ended up working out really well."
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Despite the slight drop to a third-place finish in the BIG EAST Tournament that year, Desjardins again felt that the team were one step away from their goal. Heading into year three under Desjardins, Seton Hall was heading into the 2019-20 season with four seniors and a junior leading an incredibly talented and seasoned team.
 DOMINANCE, THEN COVID-19
They started the 2019-20 season strong with a third-place finish at the Nittany Lion Invitational and Maddie Sager and Sarah Fouratt finishing as co-champions with High Point's Samantha Vodry. Fouratt also tied Seton Hall's par-72 single-round record in just her eighth tournament as a Pirate. Sammie Staudt recorded her best-ever individual tournament that weekend and then bettered herself just a week later at the Princeton Invitational.
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As a team, the Pirates claimed their first first-place finish of the season at Princeton with both Staudt (tied-second) and Fouratt (fourth) finishing in the top five. Seton Hall recorded three more second-place finishes and two fourth place finishes in their next five tournaments of the season, Desjardins was confident that her team were finally hitting the peak levels of performance she knew she could get out of them.
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Graduate Lizzie Win
"The goal is always to win BIG EAST, but this team is just so full of talent," Desjardins. 'The first year we kind of tapped into it, the second year we kind of tapped into it a little bit more and by the third year, we really tapped into what this tam is capable of doing. Honestly, if we were not stopped by COVID-19, that team would have been unstoppable in March and April."
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling all spring sports in early 2020, the team had reached their highest ever team ranking at No. 54. It was an unfortunate circumstance that put a halt to the team's incredibly good form, but it has not strayed them off course from the ultimate goal of winning the BIG EAST Tournament in 2021.
For returning graduate students and senior players, this season is much more than making up for lost time in 2020. It's about leaving behind a legacy and carrying on the winning tradition that was started by Doell and her first group of players 10 years ago.
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"Something that's stuck with me for the past four-and-a-half years is that you need to leave your legacy," Win said. "Whether that's in golf or the way you interact with people in administration or your teammates, and I think that's definitely the way to look at things. The legacy that Cassie (Pantelas) and Macky (Fouse) left was so positive, and I wanted to do what they did if not a more significant mark."
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The Seton Hall women's golf team is scheduled to begin their season on Mar. 14 at the All-State Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate. When the first golf ball is struck by a Pirate on that day, it will have been over a year since the last was hit in a competitive tournament. The progress shown over Desjardins' first three years at Seton Hall has not fallen off even amid a gap year in competition, and the players are ready to return to the golf courses to finish the job they started last season.
"I think we are all very excited to be back on the course and be competing," Kness said. "We're all on board with our goals and what we want to accomplish, and we're very welcoming of our new members. Our main goal, like it is every year, is to win BIG EAST and I think we're all ready to go."
