Women's Golf coach Karen Bahnsen Interview (Sept. 7, 2005)

Karen Bahnsen starts her 26th year as the LSU women's golf coach, loving her job as much as she did the day former coach Buddy Alexander asked her to take the job.

With the way her team has played of late, advancing to the NCAA Division I National Championship three of the last four years, there are a lot of things to love about the LSU golf program.

One of things to love is the way Bahnsen coaches her team with a drive and determination and a willingness to do whatever is necessary to succeed.

But she has had the drive, the determination and a willingness to succeed ever since she was a player at LSU in the early 1980s, joining the fledgling program as its first signee.

One can also say that those who have succeeded in this program are those that understand that same drive, that determination and a willingness to do whatever is necessary that Bahnsen preaches.

Bahnsen knows what it takes to get to the pinnacle of women's collegiate golf - the NCAA Division I Women's Championship Tournament. She will ask her team to work hard and respond to the challenge, but it will be nothing less than she ever asked of herself as a player.

If the players accept and understand, success usually follows.

Bahnsen has come up with a simple philosophy that she followed as a player. It's so simple, but so amazingly effective when put into play. She wants her team to play each shot as a separate event. It something bad happens, forget it and move on. Don't let it carry on for four or five holes. Most of all, she wants her players to have fun.

When her players believe in it as much as Bahnsen does, they usually a) play strong team rounds or b) grind out a potentially disastrous round and turn it into a score the team can use. Both are important ingredients in a successful golf season.

Bahnsen's love and desire for a program she has devoted over half her life to is what also gives her the smiling satisfaction about a program she has virtually helped design from scratch.

Plus, all these years of coaching has done nothing to slow her down. In fact, she is more energized than ever to make the program a continuing player in the national spotlight.

Just think about it for a minute. How many programs are there in any sport in Division I intercollegiate athletics where the program's first recruit goes on to become the head coach of the program and stays long enough to not only be the dean of league coaches in the sport, but also one of the longest tenured coaches in school history?

Seems impossible, but when it comes to LSU women's golf there is one special lady who can recite the history of the program from day one. Suffice it to say, in college golf circles, she is one of the most respected individuals in the game today. That is why she was inducted in December 2008 in the National Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

From first recruit, to four-year player, to student assistant to head coach, it was a rapid but very successful transition from signing in 1979 to taking over as head coach prior to the 1984-85 season.

She has also done a fabulous job of changing as women's college golf changed. Since her arrival at LSU in 1979, the sport of women's golf has risen in talent and stature to the point that SEC championships and national championships are decided by mere strokes instead of one or two teams dominating a field. The list of stars from the SEC who have gone on to success in the sport continues to grow each year. Bahnsen and assistant Golda Johansson Borst, a former SEC star golfer, have combined to tenaciously recruit to find the best around for the LSU program and the results are showing with great success.

Bahnsen has contributed her share of names to that list over her years as head coach. There was the nation's No. 1 player, Jenny Lidback, in the mid-1980s, who led LSU to the NCAA Championship Tournament and then went on to become a major tournament winner on the LPGA Tour. Also, from the 1980s, came Jackie Gallagher, a steady player who continues a long, successful career on the women's tour.

The "Three Amigas" signaled a new era in LSU women's golf in the mid-1990s when the highly recruited trio of Ashley Winn, Michelle Louviere and Laura Moore led LSU to succession of NCAA appearances (including a program best fifth place finish in 1998), a No. 1 ranking and nine tournament titles.

Katy Wilkinson Harris ended the 1990s with bookend All-American performances in her freshman and senior year. The 2000s opened with Shreveport's Meredith Duncan bringing LSU more national recognition by winning the U.S. Women's Amateur title and helping her country keep the Curtis Cup in matches with Great Britain and Ireland.

In 2005, senior Brooke Shelton became the fourth LSU golfer to finish in the top 10 at the NCAA Championships, finishing a strong eighth in the individual competition.

Seniors Rebecca Kuhn and Alexis Rather, along with junior Caroline Martens helped LSU to two NCAA Championships in both 2006 and 2008 and now another LSU golfer, Megan McChrystal has added All-American status to her name after a 2009 season in which she became the first Lady Tiger to average under 73 for an entire season.

The Lady Tigers are again roaring on the national scene as a team. A team that was struggling to hang in the top 50 is back in the top 20 after its latest appearance in the NCAA Championships this past May and in the top 10 after the 2009 season.

So Bahnsen takes the LSU program into its 31st season with the same dogged determination she has shown throughout her days as a player and through her years as head coach. The numbers show her success: 16 All-Americans, 34 All-SEC, 30 tournament titles, 30 individual titles, 10 top three finishes in the SEC championships, 15 appearances in the NCAA regionals, nine appearances in the NCAA Division I Championships and five top-10 finishes in those eight events. 

She has coached two winners of the prestigious LPGA Diana Shore Award (Lisette Lee in 2000 and Meredith Duncan in 2002) and the 1986 College Player of the Year (Jenny Lidback). But let's talk off the course as well. There have been 72 Academic All-SEC honorees, 22 National Golf Coaches Association Academic Scholars, and for many years, the women's golf team has had one of the highest GPAs for an athletic team at the school.

Throughout her years as coach and player, Bahnsen has looked at the big picture of her involvement in women's collegiate golf and life as well.

She knows nothing on the LPGA or Futures tour is guaranteed for any golfer. She knows what it is like to have a husband, a family and the need to divide time between the coaching job and the family job. Her values on balancing both are what make her a special person and a coach players want to play for.

Every year has brought new challenges and each time Bahnsen has answered that call. Every year the desire to succeed is that much greater and that is what seems to continue to light the fire of the lady who knows LSU golf inside and outside, backwards and forwards.

Bahnsen's teams learn a lot about golf during their LSU days, but they also learn a lot about the ups and downs of sports. She doesn't just go through the motions of being a coach. Bahnsen knows what the girls are going through with each shot they take and she feels their excitement and disappointments. She is there to congratulate, offer a tip when necessary and provide the consoling hands of sympathy when things done go the right way.

It's that style which has earned her the respect of her peers throughout the league and country.

Bahnsen came to LSU with credentials that were excellent, letting in golf at McGill Toolen High School in Mobile, Ala. She led McGill Toolen High School to two state titles and in 1979 won the state individual championship and the National High School Tournament.

It seems obvious this lady was meant to be a top golfer and later a great golf coach. Bahnsen's mother was an LPGA teaching professional, a four-time Alabama state women's champion, and a Mobile Sports Hall of Fame inductee.

These days Bahnsen is doing what needs to be done to keep her program in the forefront of women's college golf. She hosts one of the spring's top collegiate golf tournaments and while the program has a very recognized and successful past, she is working hard to add new memories to the history of the program.

Bahnsen is married to LSU Senior Associate Athletic Director David "Bo" Bahnsen. They have two children, son, Darren, 20 (a junior at LSU, a former member of state championship basketball and golf teams at University High in Baton Rouge and a manager for the LSU men's basketball team) and daughter Devin, 18.

The Bahnsen File
Name: Karen Mayson Bahnsen
Date of Birth: Oct. 11, 1960
Husband: David “Bo” Bahnsen, LSU Sr. Associate AD
Children: Darren 20, Devin 18
High School: McGill Toolen, Mobile, Ala.
College: BA, LSU, 1984

Golf Achievements
1979 High School All-American; National High School Champion
1980-83 Four-year letter winner at LSU, first golf signee; AIAW Tournament participant, 1980-81; NCAA Tournament participant, 1982
1986 SEC Coach of the Year; NGCA South Region Coach of the Year; Team finished ninth at the NCAA Division I Championships
1992 Team won Southeastern Conference Championship Tournament
1994 Member, La. Team, SE Women’s Amateur Championships
1995 Member, La. Team, SEC Women’s Amateur Championships; SEC Coach of the Year; Winning Co-Coach, East-West All-Star NCAA Match
1996 Team finished eighth at the NCAA Division I Championships
1997 NGCA South Region Coach of the Year
1998 Team finished fifth at the NCAA Division I Championships
1999 Team finished 10th at the NCAA Division I Championships
2000 Team finished 10th at the NCAA Division I Championships
2001 Team finished 12th at the NCAA Division I Championships
2006 Team finished 23rd at the NCAA Division I Championships; LSWA Louisiana Women’s Golf Coach of the Year
2007 LSWA Louisiana Women’s Golf Coach of the Year
2008 Team finished 15th at the NCAA Division I Championships; LSWA Louisiana Women’s Golf Coach of the Year; Inducted into NGCA Hall of Fame
2009 Team finished 12th at the NCAA Division I Championships

 
Bahnsen's Year-by-Year Coaching Record