It isn’t always possible to put a finger on where, exactly, a winning team found its edge. In the case of Pomona-Pitzer, however, connecting the dots is relatively easy.
After winning the Golfweek D3 October Classic on Tuesday, what head coach John Wurzer calls the biggest regular-season victory in program history, Wurzer could pretty confidently point to the long holes at Baytowne Golf Links in Sandestin, Florida. He coaches a team of longer-than-average players, and so Wurzer had been chewing on par-5 scoring for a while.
“The first day, they were 9 under on the par 5s,” Wurzer said. “It was, for us, a really amazing performance on those holes and it really kind of separated us the first day.”
For the week, Pomona-Pitzer played the par 5s in 11 under. Carnegie Melon, which finished runner-up to the Sagehens, played them in 4 over. Pomona-Pitzer finished 54 holes at 15 over, 18 shots ahead of Carnegie Melon, the team that had topped Pomona-Pitzer two weeks ago at the Fall Preview.
That’s easy math, and it’s not like Wurzer had intricate, detailed plans for his players – though they could have easily followed them if he did.
Wurzer, in his sixth season as the head coach of Pomona-Pitzer, notes that his program attracts an Ivy League-kind of athlete. “They have to be amazing students, so they’re poised, they’re smart, they’re aware, they’re very coachable,” he said.
It’s a unique setup back home in Claremont, California, where Pomona College and Pitzer College, two separate institutions that combine into one athletic program, help comprise the “5Cs” that also include Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College. The latter three compete in the combined Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletic program.
Pomona-Pitzer competes in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference along with perennial powerhouse programs Redlands and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. The area is loaded with talent, to the point that Wurzer said his team never competes in a tournament where there isn’t at least a top-8 school in the field. The proverbial bar is no further than two stout par 5s away. That’s the distance to Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, which won the 2018 D3 women’s golf title.
“Our main rival for golf is 1,000 yards away, on the same campus,” Wurzer said.
When Wurzer arrived in Claremont six years ago, Pomona-Pitzer was a talented program that had never won the conference title. The Sagehens won it the past two years. He has orchestrated a slow build, and so far this season, his team has won twice and finished runner-up twice.
“For us, it was really about getting competition,” he said of two trips east to start the fall. “We wanted to come to this event because it was really one of the two best regular-season events in the country – in the fall for sure.”
At the Golfweek event, Pomona-Pitzer drew senior leadership from Katelyn Vo, who led the team with a runner-up finish individually. Vo, at 1 over, was three behind individual medalist Sydney Kuo of Washington University-St. Louis.
Jessica Mason (fourth) and Emily Chang (T5) also bring back experience, while freshmen Eunice Yi and Rachel LeMay have played the whole fall season with the Sagehens.
“We’ve just built toward rising to the level of competition that’s in our conference and they set the bar and we’ve just tried to kind of reach it and surpass it,” Wurzer said. “Wins like this just show that we have players that have bought in and they’re exceptionally talented. The teams in our conference have pushed us to be great because the only way we accomplish goals that we set is to beat them first and foremost.”
Wurzer knows as well as any college coach that success does not happen overnight. A native of Southern California, his history in the game is layered with teaching, program-building and simply observing at every level.
Wurzer founded the Torrance High School girls golf program in 2000 and coached the team to its first of many California Interscholastic Federation State Girls Golf titles in 2005. Program alumni include Angela Park, the 2007 LPGA Rookie of the Year, plus LPGA players Jane Rah, Jenny Shin and Demi Runas.
Wurzer gained notice for what he was doing in high school golf, mostly as his players were recruited to top schools (or went straight to professional golf), and he spent four years as the Director of Golf Operations at USC, learning under then-head coaches Chris Zambri and Andrea Gaston.
After an assistant coaching stint at Long Beach State, his alma mater, Wurzer found a head-coaching opportunity at Pomona-Pitzer, where he leads the men’s and women’s teams.
After so many years in a pocket of high-caliber golf, Wurzer’s knowledge is deep. He has watched notable careers unfold in all directions – from Lizette Salas, for example, to Stewart Hagestad.
“I’ve seen a lot and it just allows me to have perspective and coach these players, recruit very differently but coach a very similar way and use a lot of those lessons I learned along the way from SC and when I was at Long Beach State,” he said.
As his time at Pomona-Pitzer is showing, the ultimate success of a program comes down to the players. But the identity? That’s built quietly, and painstakingly, by the coach.
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