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Sue Bower (Dartmouth '85)Head Golf Coach -- Tulane |
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Bio
 What convinced you to come to Dartmouth?
I grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire. I was born and raised in Hanover. My dad is for forty years an adjunct professor at Amos Tuck School and was a Superior Court judge from 1969 to 1985 and then from 1985 to 2001 was a Supreme Court judge. He was a judge by day and a professor by night. So when I was looking at colleges and universities, being a golfer by trade— but also a basketball player, I wanted to try to find a school that allowed me to do both. Back then I actually thought I could play basketball. I quickly found out when I went to try-outs that that was not necessarily the case. So I looked at schools like North Carolina, Wake Forest, Duke, Rollins College, and then when I got my acceptance letters and put them all on a pile, I weighed the pros and cons of going to school in your own hometown. I just said, "you gotta be crazy you have one of the best schools in the country and it just so happen to be a mile from your house." But I took a year off, I did something kind of unique. I deferred my admission for a year and I traveled all over the country and I went to Bermuda and Mexico and played amateur golf for an entire year. So when I came in Leslee Subak, who was a junior on the squash team and was a golfer by trade, said, "you know I hear this Sue Johnson is coming into Dartmouth we need to get a women's golf program started." So that was the fall of 1981 when women's golf started.
So Dartmouth started the women's golf program for you?
Well no, I won't say that. Leslee was the brainchild and had been working with our administration at Dartmouth, for I would say probably since her freshman year. It's just one of those things when's the right time? Coincidently it happens when someone who's a pretty accomplished golfer was going to come in. But Leslee did all the groundwork, I got to pay the dividends. I walked right in and boom-boom there's a golf program and Izzy Johnson, who was married to the golf pro at Hanover Country Club— Bill Johnson. Izzy was an amateur and had been contemplating being a teaching professional, as I say everything kind of worked out. Izzy said yes I'll be the coach, Leslee had done all the groundwork, and said hey we want to start a program we just need live bodies. Sue Johnson who is from Hanover Country Club they know she can play, wham-bam hey let's start a college golf program so I walked into really a neat situation.
What was your experience in youth athletics? Were there opportunities available to you?
It's really interesting, I have an 8 1/2-year-old here in New Orleans and he has been playing organized sports since he was four. We really didn't have a Parks and Recreation Department in Hanover that was in full swing until my seventh grade. A gentleman named Hank Teney, who's still there today running the Hanover Parks and Recreation Department, and a couple of moms including mine went down and said hey we need to start a basketball program we got a lot of good athletes in this town and so Hank said heck whatever I'll do it and I'll coach them!‹I was a competitive swimmer; I started when I was seven years old. Really I was just a jock with nowhere to go and so I swam because it gave me a competitive outlet. Then when Hank came into town, basketball became the thing to do. I was interviewed locally here and they asked me who was one of the most influential coaches I've ever had the good pleasure of being around and Hank Tenney is still number one on my list. My seventh grade basketball coach he was just a great coach. He taught me now as a current coach so many good things about how to deal with young women and how to get some competitive fire with women and all that good stuff. All along I started playing golf the summer when I turned ten so once I started playing basketball in the summers my mother was completely nuerotic because she would have to get me to double swim team practices, golf practice and then we would have basketball in Woodstock, Vt. I'd go down and play basketball, summer league basketball, two-three times a week. I think she was very happy when I got my license when I turned 16.
It sounds like you had a great advantage. Many women from your era didn't seem to have some many athletic opportunities.
Yeah, there was more. Timing is everything. Today, though, if you are starting your first real competitive thing other than swimming when you're in the seventh grade and your in today's world you are five and half steps behind everybody else. Like I said my son has been playing competitive soccer and competive baseball since he was four. He has two baseball seasons and two soccer seasons we are talking about seventh grade when we had maybe six-to-seven games against local communities. So the opportunies are ten-fold now than they were back then. But I didn't know any better ,that was what was there. My parents knew I loved sports and loved to be around it so my mom and along with a couple other moms in the Hanover area really pushed Hank hard to say hey we need this thing and now it flourishes and I'm sure it goes down to the pee-wee level like my son's in and the Parks and Recreation Department in Hanover is thriving from everything I can see.
How did an Ivy League experience affect your athletics pursuits?
I remember talking to my academic coordinator when I was a junior in college, it was Jim Wright— who's now the President at Dartmouth, and he was a history professor at that point and my academic advisor. My how we have all grown in the last few years! So I remember talking to Professor Wright and saying, "well I'm going to do my internship in Florida," and he is really interested sitting on the edge of his seat, and I say, "I'm going to go play professional golf," and he went, 'What!'. To be honest with you I'm a professional golfer and a collegiate golf coach because I went to the Ivy League. I don't know if I would have done that, and I know that sounds kid of strange, but it allowed me to really really grow because I was the number one player from the moment that I walked in I got to be quietly the team leader even though Leslee was the heart and soul of the golf program. She was the junior on the team and so on, but I clearly was the leader from the playing point of view. I really got to thrive in a very small pond environment but I definitely was thriving. Had I gone to Duke or Furman I would have been the four-or-five player down there and I don't know if my love and intensity would have flourished and grown quite as much. I think a lot more was asked of me because we were a fledgling program starting from scratch and I could see this thing blossoming. For me at the time absolutely the perfect fit and I wouldn't have done it any differently.
 How has the national climate concerning women's athletics changed since you were in school?
Just as a collegiate coach, I started in the fall of 1992, there were 121 college golf programs. Tulane was 120th so I had a long way to go. Now today we just had our national coaches convention here in New Orleans, there are 225. 121 to 225 Division-I, that's just Division-I golf programs. So it has doubled almost in 12 years. Title IX is obviously our quiet, good friend but it's what you do with Title IX and how you take advantages of the opportunities and there's no questions that these young women today are taking full advantage of opportunities that are there and they're not looking back. It's very exciting, It's very different for me to coach at this level than coach at the Ivy League level because I have six scholarships to work with. There are no scholarships in the Ivy League. I'm competing against Duke, Auburn, and Florida, they're competing against Harvard and Princeton. It's just a completely different bird. Even the Ivy League level, now you've got some players that can flat play but their making emotional choices academically to say hey I'm a little afraid of Tulane because of the amount of missed class time so on and so on and is that potential going to hurt my GPA to go to law school or med school or whatever. Which I try to tell them that's a bunch of hogwash, have your cake and eat it too. But even so, as I tell any young prospect this isn't for the faint of heart. If you don't want to be an athlete that is going to make a year-round commitment to the sport of golf then you probably shouldn't come to my school. There's no question that the opportunities are bigger and greater. Since I've lived it, it makes my job that much more difficult because there are so many good universities. The University of Virginia just started a program a year and half ago, why? Because it's a great school.‹ You've got great schools that have decided to get involved, some have done it aggressively; Tulane has had a program since 1989. You see Vanderbilt started a program about the same time as Tulane. You can see the benefits now. My program is No. 10 in the nation, why? Because I have a great school. If you have that as a baseline these girls are eventually going to find you. Hey I can have my cake and eat it too and heck it's not bad they're gonna pay for my education.
What are major obstacles facing young females who want to play athletics?
A major obstacle is that athletics is too intense for their own good. College athletics in general, a little bit of being a student-athlete is really being lost in the equation and Myles Brand is talking about that you know, 'where is the student part of the equation?' I think the Tulanes of the world are going to thrive because they are now going to start penalizing universities when the graduation rates aren't above fifty percent and there's a potential loss of scholarships and so on and so on. The opportunities are great but the commitments for these young people are becoming so difficult and so time consuming that it is a little bit difficult now. Even in the landscape I'm coaching at and the level of golf, it's very hard to be able to have a true college experience because of the weight training component and the year-round commitment and everything else. I think that makes it very challenging for these young people, because I want them to have a fun college experience.
What has athletics done for young girls that choose to participate?
Well any word that you want to use to describe the teamwork, the commitment, any of those types of things that you learn. I don't think you really can render anything but positives from your athletic experience if you go in there with other people who are trying to strive for the same goal. I know for me, I obviously had a great college experience or I wouldn't be doing it. Here I am. I had a lot of different opportunities but the game of golf is something that I passionately love. I love to be a role model for young people and for me, am I working at 100% maximum? Probably not, but the bottom line is that I definitely have a chance to be life coaches for these young people and many other things. The things that you can learn from competitive athletics the winning and losing, the teamwork, the focus and determination, and those sort of things will suit you well in any realm.
Click here to read the interview with current Dartmouth golfer Anne Daher.
Click here to return to "Then and Now".
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