SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Oregon assistant coach Monica Vaughn was pulling for Arizona State to advance to match play at this year’s NCAA Championship.
If you don’t follow college golf, you probably think I’m lying. If you do, then you absolutely know I’m not, seeing as Vaughn is a former Sun Devil who helped Arizona State sweep the team and individual titles at the 2017 NCAA Championship.
“Once (Arizona State) missed out, all their fans were like, ‘Mo, we’re rooting for you. If it’s not us, we want it to be you,’ so I definitely feel the love,” said Vaughn, who joined Derek Radley’s staff in Eugene in the fall of 2018.
The former star for the Sun Devils has a chance to win a national title as a coach just five years after winning as a player on Wednesday as Oregon takes on Stanford in the match-play final at Grayhawk Golf Club.
“I tell people Coach Mo was the college player that I hated the most because she beat us all the time,” joked Radley, who was an assistant for the national champion Arizona women in 2018, a year after Vaughn graduated.
“In some ways I feel like we’re the Dream Team. She’s experienced everything as a player, had incredible success at the amateur level, winning the national championship in 2017, being a Curtis cup member and top 10 in the world, and I’m thankful for my history as a coach,” said Radley, who also caddied for his wife, Sarah Brown, who played professionally for eight years. “We feel like we have a lot of knowledge to give to give to our team, and with their talent and their drive that’s really the secret to the success.”
Success doesn’t quite do the Ducks justice, seeing as the Quack Attack won a program-record five times this season – including the first Pac-12 Conference and NCAA Regional titles in program history – and placed inside the top five in all 11 of their starts. That’s why it’s no surprise the nation’s No. 2 team, led by a Dream Team of coaches, is still standing.
Four of the five Ducks finished inside the top 40 on the individual leaderboard to earn Oregon the No. 2 seed. Junior Briana Chacon, who earned the first-ever medalist honors at an NCAA regional in program history shockingly was the worst at T-52. She responded by winning her quarterfinal match, 4 and 3, and her semifinal match, 2 and 1, to help lead the Ducks to the final.
The moment @TzeHanLin0301 and @Mvaughn13 heard the victory. #GoDucks pic.twitter.com/DQ3voEBPnE
— Oregon Women’s Golf (@OregonWGolf) May 25, 2022
Vaughn said her deep course knowledge has played an impact, noting how Radley’s time in the desert helps, too.
“We understand how to play desert golf. We understand the wind. We understand the heat, even the elevation. I really feel like our experience in the desert has given us a lot of insight in how to really play this golf course without many errors, and our girls thankfully do a really good job of listening to their coaches,” she said with a laugh. “Derek and I are very confident in our decision making and I feel the girls really trust that.”
They’ll need all that trust and more against a top-ranked Stanford side that has five wins on the season and didn’t finish outside the top three in any event.
“We, from the beginning of the season, really felt like we truly were the number one team in the country. Rankings aren’t everything,” explained Vaughn. “We got our first one in the fall, and then it was just a string of wins. We were sort of like, ‘Holy cow,’ but at the same time we’re like, ‘No, this is totally believable, this is this is us, this is who we are.’ So we just kept stringing them along and we’ve had so many firsts, first Pac-12 win, first regional win. We’ve broken so many records in Oregon’s history book and we just think of this as another one to check off the list.”
“It’s really cool that I’m in Arizona and basically in my old backyard,” added Vaughn, who said she basically lived at Grayhawk during her time at Arizona State “I know everybody here and I feel the love, and so this definitely feels like a more special place to do it than at any other site.”
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