One Last Ride

On the heels of another triumphant week, Methodist University women's golf coach Vici Pate bids her team a bittersweet goodbye

The Methodist University women's golf team, from left to right: Coach Vici Pate, Gretchen McLean, Susan Martin, Paige Caldwell, Junko Suzuki, Sara Dickson

By Tim Rosaforte

Photo courtesy of Methodist University

May 22, 2009

Back on campus this week, Vici Pate was celebrating her seventh straight national championship by cleaning out her office and moving out of her dorm room at Methodist University. On Sunday night the women's golf team returned from a 12-hour ride from Port St. Lucie, Fl., where they won the Division III title by 25 strokes against schools like Wisconsin-Steven Point and Gustavus Adolphus. Crammed into a minivan because the school's travel bus broke down, Pate and her five players rode in the rain with the trophy by their side, playing games to occupy time and deflect from the eventual end of this final road trip.

When they returned to an empty campus in Fayetteville, N.C., at 11 p.m., Paige Caldwell, the team's MVP from Ohio, didn't want to get out of her seat. The team's two seniors, Junko Suzuki from New Jersey and Sara Dickson from Rhode Island, were especially emotional. Pate also had to console Susan Martin, her two-time national champion from Atlanta, and Gretchen McLean, a sophomore from Fayetteville.

"The biggest thing was, saying goodbye, that was hard," Pate said on Wednesday. "I knew if I didn't leave, or if they stayed any longer, that I'd burst into tears. I told them, 'You guys will always be a part of my life.' It was so sad."

Pate, 42, attempted to step down a year ago, but one extra semester turned into a full year, and now she has more national championships the legendary golf coach Linda Vollstedt of Arizona State and went one up on the iconic Tennessee basketball coach, Pat Summit. But this isn't the high-profile life of a Division I college coach. In most cases, this is traveling through the back roads of North Carolina and into Virginia in a 15-seat passenger van. All the while, Coach Pate has been behind the wheel.

"I am the bus driver, that's one of my titles," she said, adding that most schools have a clause that on trips of over 300 miles, the college must charter a bus or fly the team. When asked, "What about you?" Pate just laughs.

That's just the way it is down on D-III, but from this level comes more life messages than professional careers. For inspiration, Olin Browne dropped by PGA Golf Village before the tournament began, telling his story of not starting golf until he was 19, of playing in this same tournament as a senior for Occidental in 1982, of getting close to the lead, only to shank eight straight shots. Here he was, three PGA Tour wins later, having shot 59 in a U.S. Open qualifier, one of the most respected statesmen in the modern game, to tell them that somewhere in that crowd, someone could make it, too.

If there's a player from Pate's team who has the playing record to scratch out a pro career, it could be Martin, who has another year to bring her scores down. Like Browne, she suffered through a bad case of the shanks nearly all season. "She had personal issues that just ate her up," said Pate, who besides bus driver also lists "counselor" on her job description.

There is a lot of sharing on those bus rides, and a lot of growing up, too. Sitting in the front row of the grandstands that Monday night at PGA Golf Village, listening to Browne, were two players who were heading out into the workforce, two young women that epitomize the spirit of college athletics on this level, the two seniors who didn't make the team until they were upperclassmen, Dickson and Suzuki.