Women’s golf will now join the 16 other Division II sports teams that the University of Tampa has to offer. The program’s establishment was decided upon after discussions between the university’s athletic director, Larry Marfise, and President Ronald Vaughn.
“We talked to him and went back and forth over what we would like to do and the reasons why,” Marfise stated. “We’re looking at opportunities for student athletes. We wanted to do something that gives kids the opportunity to compete and golf was just a natural in Florida.”
With the announcement of the women’s golf program, UT hired a coach for the team. Current assistant golf pro at Silverado Golf and Country Club, Head Coach Missey Jones was brought on board to begin recruiting and fielding a team.
Coach Jones has never actually coached golf before, she has coaching experience with basketball on both the collegiate and professional level.
She was an assistant basketball coach at the University of Houston, East Tennessee State University and Colorado State University. She also spent time in Brazil coaching for a national basketball team and recruiting American athletes to join the squad.
Coach Jones said she heard about the job opening from UT men’s head golf coach Rick Christie, and applied online for the part time position.
I’ve just always loved [golf]. I’ve had phenomenal instructors,” said Coach Jones. “I continue to have an instructor now. She played pro. I feel like I’ve learned a lot just from her, having a phenomenal instructor. It’s made me a better instructor actually.”
Marfise said that upon interviewing Coach Jones as a candidate for the position, he felt she had a good personality and liked the fact that she greatly values the student-athletes’ education.
“She’s very personable and she’s the type of person I think that will be very successful and will be able to coach the young ladies and work with them,” Marfise said.
Because the school year is already underway, scholarships cannot be given out to student-athletes who want to compete for women’s golf this year. However, Marfise and Coach Jones are planning on giving out scholarship money once next school year rolls around.
“In the spring, I hope to take some girls to compete and when those girls do well, then the following year, we see about scholarship money and financial aid and everything on how they performed,” Coach Jones said.
Coach Jones said she has received several e-mails from high school seniors interested in becoming a member of the women’s golf team next year, but would like more collegiate women this year to contact her so they can start competing sooner rather than later.
Coach Jones described the demographic of women who she thinks would be suited to play on the team.
“If you’re dedicated and want to compete and represent UT and continue with a lifelong sport and be competitive at it, come out and get in contact with me,” Coach Jones said. “If you played high school golf and you can shoot 80 and below, you need to come out. Low 80s is even fine too.”
The Sunshine State Conference, in which UT is a member of, has tough competition for women’s golf. Marfise believes, however, that in a few years, the Spartan women will be able to be relevant not only on a state-wide level, but a national level as well.
“We would like them to be competitive on the national level within four years. That’s very difficult within our conference, but I think it’s very doable,” Marfise stated.Marfise said that the school has been looking to add other sports to the plethora already offered at UT, but women’s golf was the most economical of sports for the resources the school has to work with, in terms of both finances and space. Though he could not give specific numbers,
Marfise said that the women’s golf program will be funded mostly by the university’s general fund as well as fundraising from the athletic department, similar to how the men’s programs are funded.
“The easiest sport to add right now would be women’s golf because we don’t need additional locker room space and it’s not a high cost sport in regards to equipment and so on,” Marfise said.
To contact Coach Jones about tryouts, e-mail her at missey.jones@ut.edu.
Daniel Feingold can be reached at minaret.sports@gmail.com.