by Mike Voltaggio, Staff Writer
As LIU women’s golf swings past its 2024 fall season, the Sharks welcome a new face to the coaching staff.
Sara Detlefsen, a former collegiate and professional golfer from Fort Myers, Florida, found herself a new home at Long Island University as the new head coach of the women’s golf team.
Detlefsen was welcomed to LIU just one tournament before the end of the 2024 fall season. She enters the role of head coach with years of experience under her belt.Detlefsen shared her journey through the world of coaching and what gave her the passion to pursue it as a career.
“I started volunteer coaching when I was 17 years old as a junior in high school and that is when I really fell in love with that part of the game,” Detlefsen states. “Golf was a game that gave me a lot of opportunity, so the ability to turn around and introduce people to it and help them at various stages of skill level to live and engage in the game that has given me so much is something that is super rewarding to me. Since my first experience with the organization, ‘First Tee,’ and then through LPGA USGA and helping coach girls through that initiative, then at ‘Somerby’ and finally the ‘Sanford Power Golf Academy,’ they all gave me a lot of different opportunities to work with a lot of different people. Each one was its own unique experience that helped lead me down my path toward college coaching.”
Along with her vast coaching experience, Detlefsen also is a high-level golfer herself competing collegiately on the Florida Gulf Coast University women’s golf team from 2012 to 2016 and professionally in the LPGA on the Symetra Tour (rebranded tothe Epson Tour) from 2015 to 2021.
With her playing and coaching career taking Detlefsen all around the country, she shared her decision process and what drew her to LIU as well as how her short time with the program so far has gone.
“College coaching was something that I’ve been looking to get into and something I am super excited to be involved with. I couldn’t have found a better place than Long Island University. It is a great school with a great athletics program and their women’s golf team is probably the best group of girls I think I’ve encountered in a long time. My official start date here was October 1. Since joining the team and getting here on campus it has been kind of a whirlwind. The team had one tournament left for the fall season, we are now in the offseason. It has been a lot of practice, a little traveling but mostly practice. Now we are getting ready for spring which is our main event. Everyone has been so welcoming and the girls on the team have been great which helps reassure me that I made the right decision,” Detlefsen shared.
Although Detlefsen was a great player with a bright future swinging the club, she is an even better coach. Detlefsen shared what excites her the most about coaching and why she wanted to get into doing it collegiately.
“For the bulk of my career, I’ve been involved with two things,” Detlefsen states. “ One is working hands-on with golfers who are at various levels of skill and two is working with LPGA initiatives to create opportunities for girls and women on the golf course. Collegiate coaching marries those two passions, working hands-on with the girls and then doing everything I can to set them up in the future not only in the game but in life as well.”
Every coach enters their respective helm with a new team with their own respective goals and aspirations for what they hope to accomplish. Detlefsen is no different.
“I have plenty of goals for this team,” Detlefsen said. “For the immediate picture, some of my priorities are building strong women in the classroom, so helping get them the tools they need to succeed in their studies because they are students before athletes. Second is to give them the tools they need to succeed on the course, so working with them and providing them with the best practice plans and guidance in terms of course management and tournament play and finally, building strong women so they can take the qualities I teach them into the rest of their lives and be leaders within their communities and just grow as a person.”
Detlefsen details who her mentors were and how they’ve helped her shape her coaching style and playing career.
“I was really lucky as a college golfer, junior golfer, and professional golfer as well to have some of the best coaches surround me. I got to work with Rick Smith who was Phil Mickelson’s long-time coach, Henry Rice who coached Annika Sorenstam for a long time, as well as Dr. Shannon Reece who is with the organization Mental Game, so those are some of my strongest influences in terms of my own game and they also helped me shape my coaching philosophies and some of the things they taught me while I was playing I brought over into my coaching,” she said. “I am also very lucky to have a big sister who is one of the best coaches within the LPGA and I worked with her for years when I was trying to get my feet wet in coaching as she helped guide me through some of the early frustrations.”
As the LIU Sharks women’s golf team gears up for their spring season which begins Feb. 17, 2025, at The Rivertown Invitational in Charleston, South Carolina, they’ll look for Detlefsen to help guide them to a first-place finish which would be their highest placing since October 30 of last season at The Shark Invitational in Lawrence, New York.
The quoted material contained in this article was courtesy of the Friday LIU Athletics edition of 88.1 FM WCWP’s “Sports Shark Tank,” with the original episode airing on Nov. 1, 2024. “Sports Shark Tank” airs Monday through Friday from 5:00-6:00 p.m. on 88.1 FM, WCWP.org, and streaming on the WCWP mobile app.
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