Oakmont club champion Colleen Meyers ready to tackle building of Duquesne women's golf program

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

On the desk in her new office at Duquesne, women’s golf coach Colleen Meyers has an elephant figurine to remind her of this old saying. It’s the way she plans to build the team.

Hired in August as the program’s inaugural coach, the Wexford resident and Oakmont Country Club champion is starting from scratch. No players. No home course. And no template for how to build a program.

It would seem like a tall task for someone with little college coaching experience — she spent the past two seasons at Carnegie Mellon, and that’s it — but Meyers said she is eager to tackle the work.

“I feel as though I have been around this environment for close to 18 years, and I have seen what has worked, and I have seen what has not worked,” she said. “And I feel very confident that I can handle anything that might come my way. I can look at any of the challenges that might come my way as something exciting to deal with.”

Unlike the methodical way in which she plans to “devour” the construction of her program, Meyers’ journey in the game of golf came in one big gulp.

When she was growing up, her high school, Laurel, didn’t have a girls golf team. Few schools did back then. Slippery Rock didn’t have a women’s golf team during her college days.

So even in her early 20s, Meyers had essentially no foundation in golf.

Then, on a whim, she told her then-fiance — now husband Jim — she wanted to play a round of golf. It seemed like something that might be fun to try, she reasoned.

“And the instant that I hit a golf ball off the tee, I felt like lightning struck me,” she said. “I was like, ‘What is this feeling?’ So I instantly became a complete addict to the sport.”

She went on to become an accomplished player. She won the Oakmont Country Club women’s title in 2020 and senior club titles in 2020, ’21 and ’23. She also won the 2021 WPGA Senior Amateur Championship at Ligonier Country Club.

In between her golf epiphany and her championships, she made the sport part of her children’s lives. Her kids, she said, were allowed to participate in whatever activities they wanted, but they were obligated to learn two things: how to swim and how to play golf. So, from the time they were 4 years old, Meyers said, twins Jimmy and Jessica, Jake and Paige, had a golf club in their hands.

Jimmy Meyers is heading into his fifth year with the Penn State golf team, and Paige is a senior on Oakland Catholic’s team.

“It was something that I was so sad that I didn’t get to experience in my youth,” Meyers said.

What she didn’t know was that steering her children toward golf also would plant the seed for her coaching career.

When Jessica entered Oakland Catholic High School and joined the golf team in 2015, the athletic department was looking for a coach. Word had got around that Meyers was a player, so she was asked to be the Eagles’ coach.

That, she said, was when she discovered her true calling.

“I got to marry my love for the sport to just being a positive role model and encouraging, and that’s typically my personality anyway,” she said. “I felt like I took the Oakland Catholic team from something that was just functioning to a really supportive environment, something that was competitive, something the girls tried out for, and it grew to a wonderful program.”

But after a few years at the high school level, Meyers decided it was time to try something new.

She reached out to Dan Rodgers at CMU, who, at the time, was running the Tartan men’s and women’s programs by himself. As it turned out, Rodgers had just been approved to have an assistant, so he brought Meyers in for an interview.

Not only did she interview with Rodgers and the athletic staff at Carnegie Mellon, she interviewed with every member of the men’s and women’s golf teams.

All at once. In a huge conference room. The players, she said, peppered her with questions.

“I loved that experience because I said, ‘Every person in this room is here because you have worked hard and you want to be here and you care about this team,’ ” she said. “And that’s the level that I give, and that’s the level I want to coach.”

Said Rodgers in an email to the Trib: “Coach Meyers is a driven, energetic and enthusiastic coach, and I expect her to do great things with the women’s golf program at Duquesne. Her attention to detail will serve her well in this new role as she builds a Division I women’s golf program.”

Coincidence or not, last season, with Meyers as an assistant, the Tartan men’s team won its first NCAA Division III championship. The CMU women’s team, meanwhile, placed fourth in the nation during both of Meyers’ years on staff.

That type of outcome probably isn’t in the cards for the Duquesne women when they play their inaugural season in 2024. For now, success will be measured in other ways.

Meyers is in discussions with some area courses to try to find a home for her Dukes. She is hoping to have that resolved within a few months and added she has been considering some ideas for how her team could give back to the club that decides to take them on.

Of course, finding players will be the most important hurdle. Meyers said she would love to recruit local talent but will be searching from coast to coast. The transfer portal likely will be her best friend in the early going. She said she wants to find at least a couple of players who have some collegiate experience for her first team.

“It’s not all about winning, but I’m a very competitive person,” she said. “Our first competitive season, I want to make sure we can make a mark.”

There’s a lot of work to be done before someone strikes the program’s historic first tee shot. Meyers, however, is undaunted. She is confident she can build a team that can be successful and do it quickly.

And if she ever has any doubts, she needs only to look at the elephant for a reminder.

“I’m excited to take one bite at a time,” she said, “and I’m going to conquer this.”