Perhaps it’s only fitting that the biggest tournament of the season so far for Sammie Chergo and Dawn Shockley will be held in Colorado, the birthplace for both coaches.
Chergo and Shockley, who built their sports reputations with the University of Denver women’s golf program, will have a homecoming of sorts next week when the top women’s golf conference in the nation holds its league championships at Boulder Country Club April 20-22.
Now in her first season as head coach at Oregon State — and having hired Shockley, one of her standout players at DU, as an assistant coach — Chergo will bring her OSU Beavers to her old stomping grounds. (Chergo is pictured in black above, alongside Shockley.)
“I’m excited to bring the team out — a lot of them have not been to Colorado before,” Chergo said in a recent phone interview. “We’ll have a whole bunch of family and friends there. I think we’ll have one of the biggest galleries out there, so there will be a lot of energy. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Chergo, the DU women’s head coach for 15 years before resigning in early 2013, indicated at that time that she was retiring from coaching. But she changed her mind when Oregon State came calling in the middle of last year.
“I thought I was” done coaching, Chergo said. “I felt I had done everything I could do there (at DU). Other schools called, and I didn’t even think about it. There were only a handful of places I wanted to go. But Oregon State called out of the blue, and I fell in love with the place. We have so much fun working to grow the program, and the community really wants to help. It was a perfect fit.
“One of the reasons I got back in was I missed the student-athlete. I missed the competition.”
Chergo worked wonders during her years at DU, taking the Pioneers to heights never seen in Colorado women’s college golf history. They finished sixth in the NCAA Championship finals in 2008, and fifth in 2009. All told, Chergo was named Sun Belt Conference coach of the year six times.
Shockley, a former state high school cross country champion from Estes Park, won the individual NCAA East Regional title in 2009, helping the Pioneers claim the regional team championship. Stephanie Sherlock and Katie Kempter also were key players during those years.
Shockley turned pro in 2009 and played on the Symetra Tour and the Ladies European Tour. Just last June, the former All-American finished fourth in the Symetra Tour’s FireKeepers Casino Hotel Championship.
“Even when she played for me, she said she wanted to be a coach,” Chergo said of Shockley. “After playing professionally, she was ready to do something else. She’s a great player, she loves the game of golf, loves coaching and she’s energetic. It’s great to watch her grow.”
Chergo is trying to do at Oregon State what she did at Denver — steadily build the program into a team which regularly advances to the NCAA finals. But she has some work in front of her as the Beavers are currently ranked 73rd in the nation, according to Golfstat, and 75th, according to Golfweek.
In the stellar Pac-12 Conference, which has three teams ranked in the top three nationally (Southern Cal, Washington and UCLA), Oregon State is either No. 10 or No. 11 out of 11 teams, depending on which rankings you use. (Utah doesn’t have a women’s golf program.)
“It’s similar to where we were with DU seven or eight years ago when we were starting to build,” Chergo said. “The culture we created at DU, we’re looking to create here.
“We have a lot of work to do to grow this program. We just opened a $600,000 indoor training center and every week we’re playing against the best teams. Hopefully we’ll be in the top 25 in a couple of years. Corvallis is a very supportive community. They love the Beavers. You can’t walk down the street without hearing, ‘Go Beavers.’ It’s a wonderful place, a beautiful college town.”
Before moving to Corvallis in the late summer, Chergo had lived her whole life in Colorado. She attended Arvada West High School and Colorado State, then served as an assistant coach at the University of Colorado before going to DU.
“I didn’t go away for college; this is kind of like my going away for college,” said Chergo, who succeeded Rise Alexander at OSU after Alexander coached the Beavers for 27 years. “But I’m a Northwesterner now. I’m close to my family, but I probably see and talk to them more now than ever before” in her professional career.
Though Chergo is two years removed from her days at DU, her influence on the golf programs there is still certainly being felt. Two of her former Pioneer assistant coaches now head the teams, with Lindsay Kuhle leading the women’s program and Erik Billinger the men’s.
“Those two are my peeps. I couldn’t be more proud,” Chergo said.
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Pac-12 Women’s Golf Championships in Boulder: The Essentials
What: Pac-12 Conference Women’s Golf Championships, with the University of Colorado serving as the host school.
Where: Boulder Country Club, 6,437 yards, par-71.
When: Championship rounds, Monday through Wednesday (April 20-22); practice round, Sunday (April 19). Ralphie the buffalo is tentatively scheduled to be on hand during Sunday evening’s team banquet. The Sunday practice rounds are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. On Monday and Tuesday, play will start at 9 a.m. On Wednesday, it will begin at 8:30 a.m.
Format: 54 holes of stroke play, with team and individual competitions. The best four individual scores from each school each day will count toward the team total.
Admission/Parking: Both free.
Participating Schools (with national Golfstat ranking): 1. Southern California; 2. Washington; 3. UCLA; 8. Arizona; 19. Stanford; 25. Arizona State; 32. Oregon; 34. California; 39. Colorado; 73. Oregon State; 76. Washington State. (Note: Utah doesn’t have a women’s golf program.)
Top Individuals (with national Golfstat ranking): 4. Bronte Law, UCLA; 7. Kyung Kim, USC; 10. Jennifer Yang, Washington; 14. Erynne Lee, UCLA; 17. Ying Luo, Washington; 20. Eimi Koga, Washington; 22. Monica Vaughn, Arizona State; 26. Esther Lee, Colorado; 28. Noemi Jimenez, Arizona State; 29. Lauren Kim, Stanford; 30. Manon Gidali, Arizona.
Defending Team Champion: Stanford.
TV: Final-round highlights will be carried on a tape-delayed basis by the Pac-12 Networks, on May 10 from 11 a.m.-noon (MT).
Streaming of the Event: Some of the action during the first two rounds will be streamed live by CU on Pac-12 Digital.
