Paul Brilliant

Women’s Golf Head Coach

Four and a half years ago we, (coach Jackie Booth, who came back from New Mexico to serve as the co-head coach) were given the task of rebuilding the women’s golf program. This season we have a team that consists of our seniors and have reestablished the program as a top 50 program. When introducing a coaching change, we felt like it would take four to five years to create a team that would accept the coaching philosophy, and as the student-athletes achieved more and more, they would come to believe in the new program.

This year, we have reached some exciting goals. We won our home tournament, the Prices Give’em Five, and set a new school record team score of 866, two over par. We had a freshman Demi Mak finish second and seniors Suteera “Pang” Chanachai, Buz Bowerman-Ritchie, and Apinporn “Mint” Swaschuto finish tied for sixth. The next highlight was Mak’s first-place finish at the BYU Invitational in St. George, Utah, which consisted of 15 teams, some ranked in the top 50. Her victory plus the second-place finish at our home tournament should give her a lead for the honor of freshman player of the year for the WAC. Of course, this makes the coaching staff happy to look forward to three more years with Demi.

It should also be noted that Pang and Mint are up for all-conference awards, and Pang is on the bubble for selection to the NCAA Regionals. The next honor, which is probably the most outstanding achievement and was achieved by the entire team of 12 student-athletes, was having the highest cumulative grade point of all sports at New Mexico State for the fall semester, 3.6, which included four with 4.0 grade points.

During this season, we have been ranked nationally by Golf Stat as low as No. 46 and at the present time we are No. 63, which is ahead of all teams in the WAC. Our goal is to win the WAC, which will give us an automatic invitation to the NCAA Regionals, and of course that gives us a chance to play our way into the NCAA Championship in the middle of May.

We must take this opportunity to thank those supporters of the women’s team who have made major contributions, over $150,000 to the program to allow us to construct the NM State men’s and women’s golf team practice facility which is located north of the No. 1 tee box. This short game area allows us to really work on our games and be isolated from the rest of the golf course.