Tag: Garrett Runion

Garrett Runion was just getting the ball rolling at LSU.

In his second year as coach of the women’s golf team, Runion and the Tigers, like so many others, had their spring season unexpectedly cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This week, the Tigers would have been at the 2020 SEC Championship at Greystone Golf and Country Club in the Birmingham, Alabama. Instead, players are strewn across the country as they wait for the unprecedented virus outbreak to subside.

“In golf we typically don’t get a lot of downtime so some of (the players) have started to enjoy it a little but now they’re starting to get a little restless and want to get back to normal,” Runion said on a recent conference call. “It is a little challenging when you don’t know when your next test is really. You can play all you want at home but you need those tournament butterflies and tournament nerves and all that to really understand how you’re playing and see if it holds up under pressure.”

The same predicament goes for nearly every team across the U.S. It might be months before it’s safe to gather in person again, so the challenge of keeping his players in a competitive state when there’s no timeline for the next event isn’t unique.

Runion, a former Tiger himself who graduated in 2008, thinks the challenge might be an opportunity to show his team’s grit.

“I feel like we’ve had these weekly meetings with our team and it’s like every week, I’m like, ‘Sorry nobody knows. There’s no new news.’ We’re just trying to stay positive and they know that when this comes back it’s going to come back fairly quick so it may be like, ‘Here’s your go date,'” Runion said. “And golf you can’t sit on the couch for six months and then pick it up and go play. You kind of have to work your way back into it so our girls know that and they want to take it as an advantage to be ready to come back.

“This is really gonna separate a lot of competition from those that were working and those were sitting on the couch eating pizza.”

Prior to being hired as women’s coach in June 2018, Runion spent six seasons as the LSU men’s golf assistant coach. Last season, Runion led his team to the 2019 NCAA Championship East Lansing Regional and a ninth-place finish at the 2019 SEC Championship, a five-spot improvement over the previous season. This year’s team, comprised of five returners as well as freshman and ANNIKA Award watch list finalist Ingrid Lindblad, was determined to continue to make strides over previous seasons this spring.

But now the Tigers — like everyone else — are on the virus’ timeline.

The months the Tigers will have away from competition will undoubtedly leave a mark, Runion said.

“You don’t really get over it,” Runion said. “It’s a missed opportunity and you think about it for a while. Having the team we had and kind of building up and we were playing better as we were going, it’s hard not to think what could have happened and keeping our girls prepared for their next tournament is hard.

“You hear guys on the PGA Tour and LPGA tour say it’s hard to be motivated when they don’t know their next tournament. So with no tournaments over the summer … a lot of them are taking time to spend more time in the gym. I talk to them and they’re like, ‘I’m sore every day,’ and (for) some of them it’s a little harder to stay motivated and to stay out and practice a little bit longer.”

While training from afar and with no real timeline is difficult, the next difficulty to hit college sports will be financial uncertainty.

With over 22 million Americans filing for unemployment in the last month, money is tight no matter the field one works. When it comes to feeling the pinch financially as a coach, Runion’s team is lucky because they attend a large university within a financially strong conference.

Not all are so fortunate.

St. Edward’s University, a private, Catholic school in Austin, Texas, announced it cut six teams Wednesday including the men’s and women’s golf teams.

While Runion said he hasn’t felt the pinch yet, he and men’s coach Chuck Winstead know financial uncertainty might be coming.

”We know it’s coming just from our camps,” Runion said. “That’s kind of the big question mark if we’ll have our camps from our schedule. We are fortunate we’re at a big school with a big budget so we play tournaments where we went to Mexico twice last year. We are prepared for if that Cabo trip may not be able to happen and we need to be able to drive a few more places as opposed to fly.

“Nothing’s really come down quite yet. Chuck and I have already discussed that we need to have a contingency plan in case we do need to make some changes to help the situation as a whole.”

Many routine aspects of life like golf have become uncertain during the pandemic, but Runion was hopeful golf could be one of the sports to return.

The PGA Tour announced Thursday an updated schedule that hopes to resume the season in June. Earlier this month the LPGA announced it too would aim for events to resume in June.

“It definitely gives us a little hope… There are a lot of kinks to work out but I think a lot of people agree that golf maybe one of the first to come back which is good for us,” Runion said.

When golf does return, the Tigers sole senior Monica Dibildox has the option to return for her season year after the NCAA granted athletes the option to extend their eligibility to the next available season in late March. However, Runion said, Dibildox is considering her options of transferring or joining the work force.

“It doesn’t look like she’ll be back for LSU,” he said.

The team is expecting the addition of two recruits to join the team next year — Carla Tejedo Mulet from Spain and Jessica Bailey, a JUCO transfer from Daytona State College in Daytona Beach, Florida.