This time last year, Saint Anselm College began the process of adding a women’s golf team to varsity sports offered on campus. Fast forward to this year, and the team is off to a promising start in its inaugural season. Regarding the transition of being a head coach and starting a new program, Head Coach Tara Watt said, “I was hired a little over a year ago and spent the last year recruiting, so I was tasked for getting a minimum five girls and seven to eight maximum for the team. So it was difficult, because most teams are looking for only one or two new freshman, and here I am looking for five to seven. Also, being in the northeast, not a lot of people that play golf want to stay in the northeast because of the weather. But we’re here, and we started August 17th, and we have five great players, and I am really happy about that!”

Coach Watt was also very happy about how the Anselmian community has responded to this new team, saying, “It’s been amazing! Everyone that finds out is super excited and super positive about our team. Even professors have expressed their excitement for the program and how great it is that we have this program!”. Needless to say, the Anselmian community is thrilled. Coach Watt continued and said, “Everyone has been super positive, and the support has been overwhelmingly positive!”. 

It comes with no shock that Coach Watt loves her job as head coach. Her favorite part about being a head coach is that she can be a role model for her players and can be there to support them in any way she can; she wants to see them succeed on and off the course. 

Coach Watt had this to say about competition in the NE10: “In the Northeast 10, Franklin Pierce has been solid for the last eight years and have won, like, four out of the last five, so they’re pretty strong. There’s a couple other pretty good teams, and then there are the rest that are all very similar. We’re all recruiting with the same elements, so a lot of the girls are from New England, so it can get really competitive in just the recruitment process alone.” 

Finally, Coach Watt shared her and her team’s expectations for the rest of the season, saying, “We have two tournaments left in the fall. With it being a new program, we have more personal goals than team wise. Being a new program, I’ve been telling my players that they set the pace for the record books – strive to break their personal records and set school records. When the season ends, we can do a lot of reflecting on what we accomplished and what we can do better. Hopefully we can get another solid recruiting class in so we can start competing for NE10 championships.”

There is no doubt that Coach Watt believes in her players and the team. The sky’s the limit for the Hawks Women’s Golf Team. This is the beginning of what is going to be a great program on campus.