Kelley Hester | Clemson University Women's Golf

In this episode of College Golf Today, host Kelly Okun speaks with Kelley Hester, the head coach of Clemson's women's golf team.

Kelley has been the president of the WGCA twice, with her most recent term just ending this year. She shares her experience coaching at a variety of programs, the importance of a supportive partner, why coaches need to network and her take on how NIL and roster caps are changing college golf.

Kelley has seen so much in college golf, and her insights are valuable to all looking to join this community as a coach or student-athlete.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to College Golf Today, inspiring tomorrow's Coaches and Players, a podcast in partnership with the Women's Golf Coaches Association and Fairway to Green. I'm your host, Kelly Oaken, and a former Division I and professional golfer. We are excited to dive into college golf's biggest topics with the coaches themselves. We're talking best coaching and recruiting practices, their take on current trends like NIL, and Sage advice for new and aspiring coaches, all straight from

Meet Kelley Hester: Two-time WGCA President

SPEAKER_00 0:26

the source. Today we're joined by Kelly Hester, the women's golf head coach of Clemson. Kelly has been the president of the WGCA twice, with her most recent term ending just this year. She shares her experience coaching at a variety of programs, the importance of a supportive partner, why coaches need to network, and her take on how NIL and roster caps are changing college golf. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today.

From Player to Coach

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into college coaching?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Sure. So my college golf experience as a player was at the University of Georgia, and I played for an amazing coach, Beans Kelly, who's legendary. And after college, I wanted to play professionally. And Beans had told me she's like, I think you should get into coaching. And now I know that's coach speak for it. I'm not sure you quite have what it takes to play professionally, but I did give that a go for a couple of years. And long story short, some family health issues. So I stayed home, didn't go to the European Tour qualifier one year, and ended up getting a job at the local country club where I grew up, Eidelauer Golf Club, and was offered a job at Mercer University, which is a small Division I school in my hometown of Macon, Georgia. And I was paid $6,000 a year. There was a player on the team who was older than I was, and I had no idea what I was doing. But but I I loved college golf. I loved college golfers, and I figured this was an open door, so I should take it. And I didn't last too long at Mercer. I couldn't quite afford to keep that job, paying $6,000 a year. But Beans, my coach at Georgia, asked me to come be her assistant coach at the University of Georgia. And somewhere in there I got engaged. And so I was at that point in my career where my husband and my now husband, we've been married 26 years now, but where we were either gonna need to get married or like decide we're not gonna continue to to date because and here I was offered a job in Athens, Georgia, and we lived in Macon, Georgia, and so I took that job in Athens and we bought a house right after we got married, somewhere in the middle, and we both commuted to work. And I was an assistant at Georgia for about two and a half years. During that time, Beans decided to retire, and she really felt like she had set the table for me to get that head job. But I was very young, 26, I think, at the time, and I thought I was prepared for the interview and for the job. Long story short, I didn't get it. They hired a guy, Todd McCorkle, who had just won the national championship at Arizona, and I had the opportunity to stay and work for Todd for

Building Programs Nationwide

SPEAKER_01 3:02

a little bit. Then UNLV was starting a women's golf program in Las Vegas, and here my husband and I are both from Macon, Georgia, and I get this opportunity to start a golf program across the country in Las Vegas of all places. And so here it is. I've only been in college coaching for three years, and I'm on my third job. So that started a whole different segment of coaching for me. Living in a different part of the country, recruiting different players from just all over the world. And so we moved to Vegas, started that program, was really only there for less than two years when the opportunity came about to go to the University of Arkansas. And something that's interesting to know about my husband, he's an outdoorsman and loves to hunt and fish. And so the call from Arkansas was pretty significant in our young marriage. I'm not sure he was gonna last too much longer in Las Vegas, but I used to tell my friends in Vegas that if I was single, I would still be there. But if I was still there, I would be single for sure. So maybe more of a family move at that point to go from UNLV to Arkansas. And I was there for five years, had some really strong teams. Amanda McCurdy made it to the finals of the U.S. amateur, was a Curtis Cupper, and then Stacey Lewis won the national championship, ended up playing in a Solheim Cup and captaining a winning Solheim Cup in 2024. But the call then came to return to Athens and be the head coach at UGA. So my husband and our 12-week-old at the time child. We moved from Fayeville, Arkansas to Athens, Georgia, and had five really good years at UGA, never ranked outside the top 15, I think, in the country,

UGA Setback and Reset

SPEAKER_01 4:46

had quite a few All-Americans and National Player of the Year. And as sometimes happens in college athletics, new AD came in and I apparently was not his person. So at 39, I had my dream job and somehow didn't still have it. And I had to decide if I wanted to stay in coaching or what my future looks like. And coaching is not a nine to five job. It's a 24-7, takes a piece of view. And here I was on my fifth job, and I kind of wanted to do something that didn't take such a big piece of me, but but was offered a job at Furman as their women's golf coach, like within the week. And so we made the short move from Athens, Georgia to Greenville, South Carolina. And Furman's an interesting place. It's a tiny little school, 2,700 students, but they had won a national championship in women's golf back in the late 70s, early 80s. And so kind of a powerhouse of women's golf, believe it or not. Betsy King, Beth Daniel, Dottie Pepper, Cindy Davis, who was president of Nike Golf at one time, some really amazing women had forged a great history there at Furman. So pretty cool opportunity for me. And I was there for four years and was able to get us back to the national championship and a competitive top 10, top 15 team. And then the call came from Clemson. And interestingly, Clemson, South Carolina is about 45 minutes from Greenville, where Furman is. So I commuted for the first two years. And now this is year 10 for me at Clemson. And so it's been a great place, a young program. I got there in year four. So this is team 13 this year. So I've had so many different opportunities at different programs in terms of the maturity of the team, like how long the team had existed. I got to start a program. I got to coach at a long-standing juggernaut at Georgia. And then I've gotten to develop a team at Clemson. So a lot of great opportunities during my time for sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Yeah, what a crazy story. It's a roller coaster.

The Importance of a Supportive Partner

SPEAKER_00 6:47

I'm sure it was within the moments too. And I love how your support of your husband has been. I feel like that's not something we've talked about on this podcast yet. What does it mean to have such a supportive partner?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Oh wow. Yeah, there is no chance that I could do what I do without such a supportive husband. And I'm a pretty outgoing person. Like I don't meet a lot of strangers, but my husband is a natural-born salesman, and he certainly is the most outgoing between the two of us and just never meets a stranger, never forgets a name. His love language is food. And so he loves to barbecue. Like he can do ribs and butts for 150 people and has for sure. And it's funny because people will introduce him as, well, that's the golf coach's husband. But actually, I end up being like the mysterious person that's never around. And I'm just Trey's wife. But we waited for I guess eight years or so before we decided to start a family. And so I think it's really fitting that we have a daughter because he's been a girl dad for all 27 years that I've been in coaching. He's just always considered my players to be like his daughters and and he loves them and treats them like our family. And that's just what works for us. But never once in all the years that we've been married has he complained about my travel schedule or how much I've been gone or that that he couldn't go fishing that weekend because I needed to go recruiting or whatever it was because our daughter had her own stuff. And so it's just he's and he's taken different jobs and sales at each step of the way. And there's just not a lot of people that would be willing to put their own career kind of on the back burner because each time we would move. One time he was he was selling crane work when all the cell phone towers were going up, and then he's selling concrete and rock, and then he's selling heavy equipment machinery, and now he does industrial supplies. But like for him, it's just always been a nice challenge to try to create relationships in whatever industry. And then he just never forgets people and he stays in touch with people. Like even from 2001 when we started that program at UNLV, like he still talks to the Texas AM Aggie family that hired him working for John Deere, selling heavy equipment machinery. So I think there's no me and what we do. Like, like it's definitely a team effort.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Wow. May we all find that type of love. That sounds so rare, but congratulations on 26 years. Thanks.

NIL and Roster Caps

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Switching gears a little bit, there's a lot going on in college golf now with NIL and the transfer portal and roster spots. What are your thoughts on that, especially as the current president of the WGCA?

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah, it's interesting. We did some polling kind of early on, and like, if you were to cap a roster, what size would you recommend? And how many scholarships do you need in college golf? And I don't know that any of us felt like we needed nine scholarships. Six was the standard for so long, and three additional scholarships. Like, what does that look like on a team? And then to have the roster cap the same as the scholarship cap. It's just a pretty interesting situation. And I'm not sure how many programs are fully funded to nine. And then you're hearing of some like hybrid models where maybe you get the financing for nine, but if you just use eight, then you can take the cash and then give some of your players cash. Like it's just really bizarre to me to negotiate all of these resources with these children. I mean, they're 15 and 16 when they're making these decisions as to what schools they're gonna visit. And they're just they're children. And I have an 18-year-old daughter. Like, I can't imagine someone having these conversations with her about like most 15 or 16-year-old girls that just want to play college golf, like they don't know about any of this stuff, and yet somehow we've created this monster, and our monster is so much smaller than that of football and basketball. Like, I just can't even imagine what that looks like inside the ropes of those recruiting conversations. But I think that we're all gonna have to figure out what this looks like. So this is the like the first year of that roster cap of nine. I think it if you have nine scholarships and there's a roster cap of nine, then there's no more walk-ons. There's no more opportunities for those kids that maybe are in-state and a good student and just really want to be on the golf team and have the opportunity to get better and see if they can prove themselves. I would say that at the state universities where I've worked, I've almost always had at least one of those kids on my team. And so it makes me a little sad that I'm not gonna be able to continue to provide some of those opportunities. And I'm not really sure what it looks like to keep nine full scholarship players happy on a roster, but we'll figure it out, we'll pivot and we'll see. We'll see what that looks like. But it is a pretty interesting time in college athletics. And I would just say that like at a Clemson, a lot of the Power Force schools were so blessed with all of these resources that are available to these student athletes. Like we have an athlete recovery center that is nicer than any spa you've ever been to. And they get these meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner Monday through Friday on top of their scholarship. It's just, it's just hard to imagine the resources that we provide for these kids. And in the NIL space, I've never had a single kid ever complain that what their experience is not enough for them. And negotiation-wise NIL money, like that's not really a part of what we do. Like sometimes once they get to school, they're able to work through an app that we have on campus that matches companies that want to partner with NIL opportunities with student athletes. We're able to do some little things like we help with some of their summer expenses if they play in a national championship and just the whole package. I think all of my kids feel so blessed to have what they have. Like I've never had a single kid be like, no, this isn't enough. Like, I'm gonna go someplace else. We do have a portal, and we actually have a a player coming in from the portal, but from a junior college. So she was gonna have to go somewhere at the end of that career. But we haven't really lost kids in the portal, and so we haven't really gained kids in the portal. And I know that there's a lot of room for that, and I know that it's great for opportunities to exist for kids that maybe didn't have the best experience or they can move up a level. We haven't done a ton of it because we've been able to fill our roster with incoming freshmen for the most part, but what you're seeing in football right now is pretty crazy. Like the thousands and thousands of kids that entered the portal because they were tampered with and all of that. Like, it just feels dirty, right? And I'm thankful that golf is a sport of integrity and I'm really hopeful that we never get to all of that bad side of what college athletics can be when there's so much money involved. But right now is a great time to be a student athlete, especially at a program that can provide the resources to travel to cool places. And I mean, these kids are getting a great degree, they're getting better at their sport, they're networking. A lot of them are positioned for jobs when they get out. Like, I don't think there's ever been a better time to be a student athlete. So so many positives, but you do have the dark cloud of all of the kind of dirty side of what's happening in some of the other sports.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah, thank you for sharing

How to Impress College Golf Coaches

SPEAKER_00 14:01

that. And for those kids and recruits that want to become the student athletes in college, what advice would you give them on how to make the best impression with coaches?

SPEAKER_01 14:10

So the recruiting process is pretty interesting. I would say for student athletes, young golfers, to learn how to win. So compete at a level, whether it's local or regional, until you're able to win at that level and then move up on to the next level and then see if you can win at that level. And then I think we we hear from a lot of families that are traveling all over the country or all over the world for the kids to play in these tournaments, and then maybe they don't have the resources for them to go to the school that they want to go to because they've spent a lot of their resources playing so much junior golf. And it is great to play and have those experiences, but I think you need to learn to win at one level. And if you shoot great scores, coaches will find you. You don't have a lot of kids shooting in the 60s, not getting recruited. And so I think the best way to get recruited is to hone your skills, do your best to improve and get better. And I would say reach out to five or 10 coaches, probably in your sophomore year of high school if you're able to, and maybe go to a camp if a coach has that kind of camp. It used to be that you could take unofficial visits at any time in your career, and those have gotten really limited now to just the start of your junior year of high school, and that's the same time you can also start taking official visits. So, in essence, the unofficial visit has kind of gone away. An unofficial visit is when you pay to go see the school. So I think it's important that you pick a school that you want a degree from, maybe not just the one that might give you the most scholarship in golf, because your degree is king. Like that's gonna be what's gonna open the most doors for you in the future. And so you want a degree that you want from a school that you want. And parents, if that means that we need to save a little bit on junior golf and put some of that in a 529 for college, I think that those are decisions that you might have to make. But the dream of playing college golf is just there's so many opportunities out there. 300 plus division one, so many division two, division three, junior college, NAIA. Like there are literally thousands of opportunities out there for kids to play. And I think it's important that you go play somewhere where you can compete because it's hard to get better if you're not traveling to the tournaments. So that might mean that you go to a junior college or a program that's outside the top 50 in division one in order to get some playing experience and move up. But it's no fun to do all the work and not get to compete. At Clemson, just right down the road, we have Anderson College and they are one of the top division two programs in the country. And I've gotten to know their coach well because Denton Moore, he comes and helps us with our camps and his kids are competing for national championships. It doesn't matter that it's at the division two level versus the division one level. And I just think that that's pretty cool, regardless of the level. If you're getting to compete and do it at a high level, that's better than sitting at home and not getting to compete. So do your research, look and see what the average scores are that these players are shooting. But then it's also got to be a place that you want to go to school.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah, thank you for that. That was so much great

The Significance of Networking for Coaches

SPEAKER_00 17:17

info. And if we're switching back to coaches that are looking to break into college coaching or moving up in their career or deciding between two different schools, what advice would you have for them as they get more involved in this space?

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah, I think there's so many more opportunities now than there once were. Like when I played college golf, there weren't assistant coaches. And then at my first job, Mercer, I didn't have an assistant coach. And even at the University of Arkansas, my assistant's position when I first got there was a GA. Um, and now it's pretty standard that programs have assistant coaches, and some programs even have third coaches, some have director of ops positions. Like there's just a lot of opportunities there. And so, or maybe even a graduate assistant position where you're gonna get some coaching experience. So I think that the networking piece is so important. If you played college golf, then obviously lean on your coach, lean on the fellow coaches in your conference if you got to know any of them, get your resume out there, have some people make some phone calls. I can tell you, I got hired at UNLV, this little girl from Macon, Georgia, because I had played at Georgia and Liz Murphy was the longtime pioneer of women's golf at the University of Georgia. And the lady who was doing the hiring at UNLV had come from the University of Florida, and she knew she was familiar with Liz Murphy, and she thought anybody who's in that coaching tree is somebody who I want involved in starting this program. And so it didn't really have that much to do with me. It had to do with whose coaching tree I was in because I played for Beans Kelly and Beans Kelly played for Liz Murphy, and you know, there's a lot to that. And so I think that we all want to get there on our own, but you certainly want to lean on those resources and who you know and who's poured into you is really important because that those are the people that have influenced you. And so it it never hurts to ask for a little help from the people around you. And I would say if you're coaching at a smaller school, reach out to some of the schools in your area and get to know if there's so down the just down the road from us, we have Erskine College, we have Anderson, like I mentioned, Lenore Ryan. All of these coaches will come and help us with our camps. And then you become friends and we can all help each other out if we're looking for a job, or even if maybe there's a recruit that might not work for us, but they might work pretty good for a place down the road. And maybe they can even develop there and might end up coming back. Like you just never know. So I would say that in all businesses you can't have too many friends, but I would say in in the business of golf, it's for certain that you can't have too many friends.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

It's a small world too.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah,

Rewards of Coaching

SPEAKER_01 19:54

for sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

What has been the most rewarding part of coaching and as well as being the president of the WGCA since you've actually served two terms now?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yeah, so coaching is like you don't really start out thinking that's gonna be your life's work, but 27 years later it's like, wow, this is how I've spent the large part of my adult life. And we have a saying on our team that golf is what we do, it's not who we are. But I think being a coach is part of who I am. And it's not even necessarily that I coach golf. I mean, I coach people, it could be any sport or any subject, but at the end of the day, for me, it's all about those people. And my journey has taken me six different head coaching jobs, and so I've been exposed to and been around more student athletes in that way because if you just stay one place, then you're just in that you get two or three students a year, and then you see them through their graduation, and you're just not around quite as many people. And so, because of the way that I've moved around in my journey, I've been exposed to so many more people. And for me, that's been probably one of the neatest things about coaching is you start recruiting somebody at 15 or 14 or maybe even younger if they came to your camp and then you watch them develop into a junior golfer and then into a collegiate golfer, and then they graduate from school and then they move on, and next thing you know, they've gotten married and they have a family and they're professionals in the working world. And so that's just really cool for me to know that you played a small part in helping somebody through their junior golf, college, golf journey. And one of the disadvantages of moving around is that you don't get to see a lot of those alums like you would like to, but certainly Facebook and Instagram help there a little bit, but but it has given me the opportunity to be around even more people.

Leading the WGCA

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Now, in terms of like leadership within our association, early on I discovered that there's two kinds of people there's people that like to sit around and complain about what's not right, and then there's other people that are willing to like do something about it. And I just felt like if if this is gonna have to do with My livelihood, then it's probably smart for me to get involved. And and I think I've I would describe my coaching style as having a servant's heart. And so I enjoy serving other coaches. I like asking questions and getting opinions and like trying to figure out like what's going to be the best way for us to move forward and how can we grow our sport, grow the game. And so early on, I got into the board positions in our association. And as a vice president, then you become your vice president for two years, president for two years, past president for two years. And so I did that relatively early in my coaching career when I was at Arkansas. And then when my daughter was born, I was president of our association. And then I found myself about 18 years later being asked to run for vice president. My good friend Lisa Strom at Ohio State, the Ohio State University, had run for vice president. So she was in position to be president. And she asked if I would consider throwing my hat in the ring. And I thought about it. And a lot has changed in those 18 years that I was definitely still involved in the inner workings of college golf, but not serving as a board member. And so I was like, all right, well, I think that's probably it's probably about time for me to do it again. And so pretty quickly, I did encourage some other people to run because I think that it's healthy to have elections and have there be some spirited competition there. And so fortunately I had enough votes that I was the winner. But the way our association works, that the person who finishes second in running for vice president also gets a board position. So either way I was going to be on the board, but positioned as vice president. And after those two years of being the vice president, I was fully aware of how much had changed during that time that I wasn't on the board. And it became pretty clear early in my presidency that we would have a change in leadership. So Roger Yafey was our longtime CEO. He had been not CEO. He his title was actually executive director, but he was the big guy running our association. And because he had been doing it about the same length of time that I had, I knew that he was probably looking to find an exit strategy at some point. And after a few conversations with him, we decided maybe just one more year on his contract early in my first year. And so I really felt like I was probably positioned to be the only two-time president at that time in order to help usher in and find the new person for our association. And that because of my perspective and the history of our association, that maybe I was best positioned

Kelley's Presidential Legacy: The CEO Transition

SPEAKER_01 24:33

to do that. And so about this time last year, January of 25, our board put together a small committee and we had 52 applicants for our we were going to change the title to match that of the senior leadership of the GCAA, the Men's Golf Coaches Association. So we were going to change the name from executive director to CEO. And we had 52 applicants, and then we started the interview process. And long story short, we were able to secure Courtney Trimble as our new CEO. And I would say that no doubt in my mind that that is part of my legacy that we were able to identify the right person for the job and get her to commit to it. I think that she will undoubtedly, I mean, already has in the short period of time that she's been on board. She's done such great things already. But the way that we modeled the succession, basically she would come on board July 1, and she and Roger would coexist for six months so that she could learn the business from him as he's kind of ushering out. She could usher in. Our flagship is our convention in December. And so that was really Roger's jam. Like he was so good at running that convention. And so it didn't seem right to have just one leader figure that out and navigate that. And so they ran our association together the back half of 2025. And then January 1st, 2026, Courtney's been running the show on her own, and already we have a presence and a seat at the table in some areas that we didn't already have. And so I'm really proud to say that I was a part of that group that was able to identify our next leader. And I'm excited to see where we're gonna be this time next year, and then five years down the road, and then 10 years down the road. Her vision for our association is just there's really no better person more suited to do what Courtney's doing because she was a student athlete. She played college golf at Auburn. She was an assistant coach, she's been a head coach, and then her company for Hire has been a partner of the WGCA. And she's also worked for the WGCA. She helped lead our mentorship program. So she's literally touched every part, every surface that the WGCA touches, she's been a part of. And so she's worn those hats. And so there's really just, I feel like her experiences, there's just no one better suited to do what she's going to be able to do for us.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Oh, well, thank you so much. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your involvement in women's golf. I think the future is really bright. Thanks to you.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Well, thanks to probably those people that did it long before me and made pennies on the dollar. They really paved the road for us. But I feel really blessed to get to do what I do on a daily basis. And so if there are people out there who think that they might want to do this for a living, I would strongly encourage them to take that step.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Awesome. Thank you so much, Kelly.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Thank you.