Fall 2001

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Great Sport

FREE GOLF AND THE OCCASIONAL MEAL The allure of the Stockbridge golf team

by Ben Barnhart

"A BOGEY WILL NEVER HURT YOU": Coach Leaman and the boys. Photo by Ben Barnhart. YOU MIGHT WONDER WHY A busy college student carrying a full course load would join an athletic team that offers no scholarships, no chance to play for a league championship, no roaring crowds or campus glory. For the Stockbridge golf team it’s really quite simple: free golf. "You can’t beat the deal," says Jason Dowgiewicz, junior in turf management and low scorer on the 2001 squad. "You get free golf and they buy you lunch and dinner sometimes." Dowgiewicz and his five teammates are a rag-tag crew who golf together as much for camaraderie and a shared interest in turf as for the competition. All are majors in the 60-year-old turf grass program at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture. (See related story, page 19.) None could be described as a duffer. All concentrate on improving their scores during spring matches against community and junior colleges, and the team completed the 2001 season 18-4. Still, no one on the Stockbridge squad is looking to challenge Tiger Woods on the PGA circuit. This, says coach and UMass sports icon Jack Leaman ’79H, is the way college athletics should be. "It’s more organized and competitive than intramurals," he explains, "but without the pain and stress of Division I football or basketball." This is the voice of experience speaking. Leaman is Jack-of-All-Sports at UMass, having at one time or another coached men’s and women’s varsity basketball, women’s soccer, and Stockbridge basketball and golf. Before the men’s and women’s varsity golf teams were defunded in 1984, he also coached them. LEAMAN DOESN'T WORRY ABOUT RECRUITING golfers for Stockbridge. There’s no budget, staff, or time for searching out talent. But the reputation of the school’s turf management program, which naturally attracts golf enthusiasts, means that good golfers often come to him. Dowgiewicz is typical of many students who find their way to Stockbridge. He bounced around several different colleges in Washington, Colorado, and his home state of Connecticut, taking general education courses and playing golf for fun all the while. Now settled into the turf management track at UMass and headed for a career in golf course management, he finds that playing on the Stockbridge squad gives him some diversion from schoolwork and satisfies his competitive urges while also connecting him with the field that will be his career. Leaman says coaching golfers is a special challenge, because each player has his own style and swing that were likely developed years ago. "For me to tell a kid to change his swing or his grip that his father taught him is just ridiculous," says Leaman. " People play golf a lot of different ways and the only thing that matters is what you put on the scorecard." So the coach concentrates on strategies and mental sharpness: The real competition, he says, is between the golfer, his head, and the course. "We talk about how to play, how to think," says Leaman. "One thing I always tell them, ‘A bogey will never hurt you – if you make all bogeys you shoot 90.’" Leaman works with his players individually or in small groups to address weaknesses in their game or problems that may have cropped up during the previous match. He says two local greenskeepers and Stockbridge grads – Bob Ruszala ’87S at Hickory Ridge, the team’s home course, and Carl Teske ’88S at the Amherst Golf Club – help by giving the team practice time. BUT LEAMAN HAS HIS OWN strategies for getting the most out of his players in competion. During an April 30 match at Hickory Ridge against Mitchell Junior College, Three Rivers Community College, and Elms College, the coach shuffles his lineup to give Steve McCormick, one of his youngest golfers, the first tee-off. "He’s a good player," Leaman says of McCormick, who normally plays in the fifth spot and struggles with inconsistency. "He can hit the ball a ton but he often goes par, par, par, seven, eight, seven." Leaman is gambling that McCormick’s concentration will improve if he’s grouped with better golfers. "But if he shoots 100 today, he’s at the back of the bus," adds the coach with a chuckle. Obviously a little nervous at the first position, McCormick starts slowly with a frustrating double bogey on the first hole. "Golf should be a stress reliever," he says after his tee shot on the second veers into the right rough. "But sometimes it just seems to make it worse." After a disappointing front nine, McCormick collects himself to score a 44 on the back and finish with a total of 95. No word from the coach on which bus seat is earned by that score. "So much of this is just taking a positive approach to the game," says Leaman. "I tell them, ‘No matter what you shoot or how bad you play, there’s a lot of people out there who’d trade places with you right now.’" Leaman is also Stockbridge’s athletic director, and in that role he schedules games, hires referees, and arranges transportation for both the golf and the basketball teams. (The basketball coach is turf management alumnus Steve Call ’82S, who works for the Town of Amherst.) Stressing the avocational spirit of the school’s sports programs, Leaman makes sure matches don’t interfere with school work, contacting professors and securing test schedules ahead of time. He says that when a conflict does arise, his players rightly choose school over sport. "Not every kid will play every match," says Leaman. "We know that from the beginning." ANY STOCKBRIDGE STUDENT IS ELIGIBLE to try out for the golf squad, and the team’s makeup is purely based on competition: Everyone plays four rounds, the lowest scorers make the team. Leaman can field six players for each match, with the four lowest scores counting toward the team total. Those four players automatically qualify for the next match, while the remaining team members play for the last two spots. Every member of the team seems headed for a job in golf course management, which also carries that favorite perc: free golf. In fact, Dowgiewicz, McCormick, and teammate Nick Welch are interning this summer at the Country Club in Brookline, one of New England’s most prestigious courses, where Dowgiewicz plans to "shoot some high numbers," he says. And while Dowgiewicz and his teammates may fantasize about matching Tiger Woods shot for shot on the 18th hole of the PGA championship someday, they realize they’re more likely to be applauding from the sidelines. "I have more dreams of managing a course on the pro tour than playing in it," says Dowgiewicz. "I think I’m a better clapper than I am a golfer."

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Free golf and the occasional meal

FREE GOLF: larger image