Carroll cut path, broke barriers in coaching

As a player or a college coach, Chelsea Carroll has known that the game of golf needs perspective.

The end game is the hole beneath the pin, but the proper view requires zooming out to assess all the potential hazards and sweet spots.

Carroll's position entering her first postseason of coaching Division I women's golf, the goal of her career, means more with the perspective of the persistence, passion and pain that it took to become the GCU assistant coach.

Carroll brought an eternally optimistic perspective to the Lopes program in her first season because she has turned every previous heartbreak into a smart break.

Devastated upon being cut from her high school volleyball team in Amarillo, Texas, Carroll turned to golf and went from an initial round in the 130s to a scholarship to play at Rogers State.
When a sports performance internship did not lead to a job, it was the career turn she needed to begin coaching as an assistant her alma mater.
As a teaching golf professional at Troon North Golf Club in Scottsdale, she yearned to coach and took over the South Mountain Community College women's program with a two-player roster in 2019 and wound up growing the program while working simultaneously at Troon North and Whole Foods Market.
When SMCC men's golf coach Aaron Puetz departed for UTEP two weeks before school and recommended Carroll take the rein, seven of the 14 players quit on her in a season that ended with her becoming the first woman to coach a junior college men's golf national championship team last May.

Carroll's first visit to GCU Golf Course was last season, when she took her men's team to its first tournament.

"I was thinking, 'One day, I hope to be here; this would be so cool,' " Carroll said of seeing GCU Golf Course for the first of her seven men's tournament wins last season. "I was really battling with them trusting me at the time. It's amazing. You can only connect the dots looking back.

"Faith is what got me through last year, feeling that it was something planned. If you're going through struggles, it was preparing me for something, and it did because I don't think I'd be ready for this position. I had to go through those trials and the hustle to be prepared for this division and this position."
Chelsea Caroll award

Carroll also had taken the SMCC women's golf program from recruiting a student and a soccer player to fill the roster to reaching the national top 25 in three years. Her men's team won the national Division II junior college title by 19 strokes, leading her to become the first female winner of the Golf Coaches Association of America's Dave Williams National Coach of the Year for the junior college level.

"Chelsea brings an enormous amount of positivity to the team," said GCU head coach Lauren Giesecke, who hired Carroll at the outset of a season that has produced the program's best spring ever with two tournament wins and two runner-up finishes.

"Every scenario, there's a positive twist to it. As we get later in the season and it's a grind with all these tournaments, she always has a way in the back of her head that it's beneficial."

During this season, Carroll Chelsea Caroll and Lauren Giesecke

was inducted in the Canyon Independent School District Hall of Fame in October, and Giesecke was enshrined last month in the Northwestern High School Hall of Fame in Kokomo, Indiana.

Together, they have the Lopes in the national top 100 and seeking the program's second WAC Championship title when the conference tournament plays Sunday through Tuesday in Blaine, Washington.

Carroll entered GCU with appreciation for her accomplishments, but respect was hard-earned last season with the SMCC men. Seven of 14 players quit after she became interim head coach, and she held other players out of a tournament for being late to practice.

Chelsea Carroll and SMCC

"Gaining their trust took a lot of time," Carroll said. "They pushed back a lot. They didn't take me seriously until they took me seriously. Showing them I cared as a coach, and I had to show them that I was going to outwork them. There were bumps in the road, but a smaller team worked out perfectly. At the end at nationals, it was a cool atmosphere nobody could explain because of all the things they went through."

Now her crushed high school volleyball dream, disappointment in sports performance job pursuits and juggling three jobs from Scottsdale to South Phoenix all make sense for where Carroll is with Giesecke and GCU.

Along the way, Carroll discovered that she craves competition and relishes teamwork and measuring progress. But she is still that same driven golfer who showed up before and stayed after high school practices to chase her goals.

"At my first tournament with GCU, I said to Lauren, 'Is this real?'," Carroll said. "Having this job where I can have this type of opportunity without moving is kind of amazing."

Grand Canyon University Athletics

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