Schaeffner on record-setting pace for CCU women’s golf

Having already watched her play a tournament in Florida, Katie Quinney knew before flying to Germany to get another look at Lena Schaeffner that the potential international recruit could be a huge addition for her Coastal Carolina women’s golf program.

And by the time she left to fly back home, well, that feeling had only grown stronger as Quinney projected Schaeffner as a potential All-American for the Chanticleers – if she chose to come to Conway, that is.

That was the tricky part.

Schaeffner says she ended up with about 15 scholarship offers and would visit five schools in America, and Quinney had company on that visit to Germany as an Oregon coach was also following the promising young golfer through her round while waiting to make a recruiting pitch.

“I liked her so much I think it made me more nervous because you go all the way over there thinking that you want this kid, but after walking 54 holes with her and meeting with her family and doing all the things you do to get to know a player, then I was terrified of not having her and not being her coach for four years,” Quinney said. “… But it was fun when we got to bring her on campus and see the fit really was mutual.”

And it didn’t take long for Schaeffner to validate all those ambitious expectations Quinney had when she recruited the promising golfer from Rettigheim, Germany.

Now a junior, Schaeffner has steadily knocked strokes off her game in her time with the Chants and heads into the start of the Big South Championship on Monday at the DeBordieu Club in Georgetown as the conference’s newly-minted golfer of the year and as a likely program record-setter.

Schaeffner’s league-leading 72.48 scoring average this season is on pace to well eclipse Coastal Carolina’s previous program record of 73.43, set by Aruka Felgueroso in 2009-10.

“Personally I just wanted to achieve my best level of golf, and right now I think I’m on a good way to doing that,” she said Friday before practice. “… Obviously [the record is] very important to me because I’m not just measuring myself with the players that are playing right now but also with the ones who have already competed and graduated. I know Coastal had a lot of good players that graduated, so it’s very good for me. I’m very happy for it.”

Schaeffner started playing golf after seeing an advertisement in the local newspaper when she was 11 years old. Her father suggested she give it a shot, and always game to try a new sport, she agreed – and fortunately stuck with it.

“In the beginning it wasn’t really a lot of fun because I wasn’t super good,” she said. “Once I started practicing more and winning some junior tournaments, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s fun,’ and I started getting into it.”

Without the opportunity to play golf in college in her home country, Schaeffner said she knew the United States offered her best future in the game and she was flattered that so many schools expressed interest.

That also posed its own stresses at first, but a month after Quinney visited her in Germany, Schaeffner made her visit to Coastal Carolina. She headed down to Florida afterward to look at a couple other schools, but before she returned home, she had already made her decision.

“When I came to Coastal, I just knew that was the spot I want to be,” she said. “I love the campus, I love the coaches. It was easier than I thought it would be. At the beginning I was a little overwhelmed with everything … but once I came down that was the spot.”

Like Quinney said, it has indeed been a good fit.

Schaeffner finished her freshman season strong while tying for second at the Big South Championship and ended her rookie campaign with a 76.82 scoring average.

As a sophomore last year, she tied for fifth at the conference tournament and ranked second in the league with her 74.30 scoring average, which was the fourth-best in program history at the time (now sixth). Overall, she had three top-five finishes and four top-10s.

And this season, she’s reached yet another level with that 72.48 scoring average while posting two tournament victories, five top-five finishes and seven top-10s. She is now second on the program’s career scoring list at 74.67, just barely behind Felgueroso’s 74.63.

“She’s one of the best ball-strikers in college golf for sure, hits it close a lot, really gives herself a lot of birdie opportunities,” Quinney said. “… And her demeanor on the course is very, very level. She’s very mature, she doesn’t get up and she doesn’t get down. A couple fist pumps for some birdies and a couple slaps on the leg now and then, but that’s about the outburst of emotion you’ll see from her high or low.”

The best recent example of that came last month during the 3M Lady Jaguar Intercollegiate in Augusta, Ga., when Schaeffner opened the third and final round with a double bogey while missing a short putt.

Quinney saw it happen, but she was in the fairway with another golfer and didn’t have a chance to speak to Schaeffner after the hole. Nor did she need to, though.

“She gave herself the talk I would have given her anyway,” Quinney said.

Schaeffner went on to shoot a 3-under 68 to finish 4 under overall and claim the tournament championship by a stroke.

“She has a really, really strong mental game,” senior teammate Frida Castillo said. “It’s amazing how she turns the round back [around], the way she acts on the golf course. I admire her a lot how she plays, how she reacts to every shot. She doesn’t let anything get to her. She’s amazing for the program.”

The Big South Golfer of the Year honor was a goal Schaeffner had set for herself, and the program single-season scoring record would be another.

But she’s thinking even bigger than that.

“I really want to go to [NCAA] nationals and show the big schools that we’re actually able to compete with them, but for me personally I also want to be internationally successful,” she said. “I just got nominated for the national team back home, so I want to play the European championships and hopefully the World Cup next year.”

Then eventually she’ll make her push for a professional career.

That still leaves a lot of time, though, to further her already impressive collegiate resume.

And Quinney, for one, believes she has a lot left to accomplish.

“We’ve had impact players in the past, but there is something about where I thought her golf game really could go and where she could develop, where we could help her develop her game [to] and the type of potential she had, and I hope we’re not even close to reaching that full potential,” Quinney said.

“I really thought she’d be my first All-American here, so we’ll see what happens, see if we can get her there.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2015 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Schaeffner on record-setting pace for CCU women’s golf."