Whenever something new begins, somebody needs to go first. That somebody is Meaghan Dufresne for the new women’s golf team at the University of Southern Maine.
Dufresne hit the program’s first shot in competition. She felt the weight of the moment when she stepped up to the tee at Riverside Golf Course in Portland for the season opening match against St. Joseph’s College on August 30.
“Definitely nerve racking, but I think it’s an awesome opportunity that we started this program because I hope it will continue to grow,” Dufresne said. “We’re able to say that we started the women’s golf program at USM, so I think that’s cool.”
Dufresne finished the match in fourth place with 102 strokes. She grew into the role of team captain over the next few weeks. As the only senior on the team, Dufresne is on track to graduate next spring with a degree in Elementary Education. She plans to return to her home state of Massachusetts to teach, so this will be her only year of collegiate golf.
Most of Dufresne’s prior golf experience had been with her family. Her mother and aunt were her main opponents. Before joining the team at USM, she had a hard time finding golf programs aimed at women and girls. That was a common experience for many of her teammates.
Anabelle Steeves, a sophomore majoring in Health Sciences, had never competed against women before joining the Huskies. She was the only girl on her high school golf team. Her disadvantage in power off the tee always made her the underdog against the boys. Male teammates weren’t always supportive, often leaving her behind to walk the course alone.
“It was definitely an intimidating environment. Now, playing with the girls, it’s such a welcoming environment,” Steeves said. “I hit a bad shot, and they’re still cheering me on to hit another one. It’s just so welcoming.”
The gender gap in golf may be narrowing. Statistics gathered by the National Golf Foundation show a surge of interest in the women’s game since the COVID-19 pandemic. But its count, seven million women and girls played a round of golf in 2023. That’s the best participation since the peak year of 2006, and the numbers continue trending upward.
USM recognized the sport’s growing popularity by launching women’s golf as the 23rd intercollegiate team offered by the Athletics Department. Its creation was one of the last major projects overseen by former Director of Athletics Al Bean before his retirement at the end of the summer.
USM already had a men’s golf team coached by Brian Bickford. He agreed to pull double duty by also coaching the women. Bickford had bridged the gender divide before as a coed coach at Greely High School in Cumberland, Maine. He mentored several state champions, and Bickford aimed to apply the same winning formula at USM.
“It takes a lot of energy and commitment from administration in order to get the go-ahead to start a program,” Bickford said. “Then it really comes down to being able to recruit players and find players.”
One of Bickford’s finds was Ryley Meyer. A Business Analytics major, she is the team’s only freshman. She’s also the only player from outside the northeast, having grown up in South Dakota.
“I came on a vacation out here a couple of years ago, and I just loved it,” Meyer said. “Where I’m from, everybody just kind of stays there. I was, like, ‘I want to go try something different.’”
Those differences also included the conditions on the golf course. South Dakota is a flatter and drier environment. Meyer had to recalibrate her shots for Maine’s hillier terrain and thicker vegetation. She relied on a big drive to set herself up for success while she modified the other aspects of her game.
Between her natural abilities and years of eligibility, Meyer is a key building block in Bickford’s plans for the future. He also recruited from the existing pool of talent in the Athletics Department. Mackenzie Kingsbury, a junior majoring in Elementary Education, was already committed to softball when she agreed to join the golf team.
By the time Kingsbury hit the links for a practice round on a sunny September afternoon, she had already spent several hours doing softball drills. She’s gotten used to the mental and physical whiplash of adjusting her swing for either a bat or a club.
“For golf, I really have to remember to pull it straight back instead of pulling it around like a softball swing,” Kingsbury said.
Any scheduling conflicts between the two sports were easy for Kingsbury to resolve since Head Softball Coach Sarah Jamo is also an assistant golf coach. Bickford credits Jamo and his other assistants with making sure each player gets the attention they need while he bounces between the men’s and women’s teams.
As hectic as it may seem to balance even one sport with a full academic load, many student-athletes thrive on that pace. Meaghan May didn’t play a sport in her first year at USM and felt unfocused. She joined the golf team as a sophomore, and the discipline she brings to the game has carried over into her studies in the Nursing program.
“I was a two-sport athlete all through high school,” May said. “I felt last year like I was almost bored when I had nothing going on because, for so long, I’ve had such a strict routine of going to school then having a two-hour, three-hour practice. (Golf) brings me back to then.”
May and her teammates played their most recent match on September 25 at the SMCC Seawolf Shootout in Cumberland, Maine. The Huskies finished fourth out of five teams. Kingsbury carded 102 strokes to rank as USM’s top individual performer in seventh place overall.
The standings were typical of most matches, with the Huskies at the middle of the leaderboard. Bickford sees a lot of growth potential. Formal training is new to much of his team. As he works one-on-one with the players to build their skills, Bickford assures them that the wins will come.
“We try to focus on a certain part of their game,” Bickford said. “Yesterday, we went to the driving range. We hit hybrids and woods. That makes it nice to be able to isolate and see their improvement. And the ‘ah-ha’ light goes on as they start to feel a little more confident and make adjustments in their swing.”
The Huskies will wrap up the regular season on Sunday at the Keene State Invitational in New Hampshire. Since the team isn’t part of a conference, the post season comes down to the New England Intercollegiate Golf Association Championship on October 19-20 in Massachusetts. Win or lose, the team has already made history just by playing.
“Coach Bickford, when we first started off, he was saying how he wanted this to be fun,” Meyer said. “He wanted us to have a fun season. That’s been the main thing. I try to keep that in mind when we play.”