BATON ROUGE — LSU women’s golf coach Karen Bahnsen, in her 25th year as the Lady Tigers head coach, will be the latest inductee into the coaches’ Hall of Fame of the National Golf Coaches Association.
Bahnsen, the 42nd member of the coaches’ Hall of Fame, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Dec. 10 at the group’s annual convention at Harrah’s Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.
Bahnsen has been a part of the LSU program’s entire 30-year history having been the first recruit for the fledgling program when it started in 1979. During her coaching career, the team has won 29 team titles and had players win 29 individual titles. Her Lady Tigers have appeared in nine NCAA Championships, eight as a coach with five top 10 finishes, including a fifth place finish in 1998.
“I am honored to have been selected for the National Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame and to join such a great list of coaches who have already been inducted,” said Bahnsen. “Throughout my coaching career it has always been about the accomplishments and person growth of my players that motivates me. I still love collegiate golf very much and it is working with such great young people that keep me excited and looking forward to the challenges ahead.
“I want to thank LSU for the opportunities they have given me, the Hall of Fame committee and all those former players who helped me earn this prestigious honor.”
Bahnsen is the dean of SEC coaches in tenure and has seen the development of women’s golf from its infant stages to the bright lights of the national spotlight.
She has coached 15 NGCA All-Americans, including two winners of the Dinah Shore Trophy Award (Lisette Lee, Meredith Duncan), and 33 All-SEC selections. She has had 68 players earn Academic All-SEC honors and 21 more who were NGCA Scholar-Athletes.
Bahnsen in a recent look back as the program entered its 30th year, recalled how she went from player to LSU graduate to LSU women’s golf coach with the assurances of then men’s and women’s head golf coach Buddy Alexander, who is now the men’s head golf coach at the University of Florida.
“(Alexander) was coaching both the men and the women,” she said. “That poor man would get out of the van with one group and jump in the van and go with the other. I felt so sorry for him, but he did a great job. I learned so much from him on how to do things. I had been studying advertising and public relations in high school, but I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. Buddy called me out of the blue and asked me if I was interested in taking the women’s job. I was shocked. This was my fifth year in school and I needed to graduate and then it would be my job. I knew I would love it.”
Among the players Bahnsen coached were Jenny Lidback, the number one player in the country in 1986 as LSU won five tournaments that year and Lidback captured the title in six events. Lidback is the only former player to win an LPGA major, capturing the former duMaurier Classic in Canada in 1995. Jackie Gallagher-Smith has had a long career on the tour along with Kristi Coats and the most recent addition to the LPGA roster in the 2000s, Meredith Duncan.
Duncan had a magical summer in 2001 capturing three major amateur tournaments, including the United States Women’s Amateur title in a sudden-death nationally-televised final match, and then helped the United States to victory in the 2002 Curtis Cup.
Bahnsen’s women’s program had one its better runs in the late 1990s when she pulled a recruiting coup that brought three of the South’s top golfers to LSU at the same time in Ashley Winn, Michelle Louviere and Laura Moore. Soon to be nicknamed “The Three Amigas” by then New Orleans’ Times-Picayune golf writer Dave LaGarde, the trio helped LSU to nine team titles, six individual championships and two NCAA Division I Championship top finishes.
Even now, the Lady Tigers remain in the national spotlight with appearances in two of the last three NCAA Championships, a win in the fall season and a No. 14 national ranking and the recent signing of national recruit Mary Michael Maggio for the 2009-10 season.
It’s obvious that LSU’s Hall of Fame coach has no plans of resting on her laurels as she looks to the future and working with more future collegiate stars.