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Black Woman Coaches Division I Men's Golf

By Tamika Jefferson
Black College Wire

Tennessee State University's men's golf team represents the only historically black college or university in the otherwise all-white NCAA Division I conference.

Catana Starks: "I want to be competitive."

And Tennessee State alumna Catana Starks is its founder. In 1988, the athletic director asked Starks to spearhead a plan to create a men�s golf team for the university after it joined the Ohio Valley Conference. Today she is the only black woman who coaches an NCAA Division I men�s golf team.

�It�s ironic that I am coaching a sport that African Americans weren�t allowed to play or go to for a means of relaxation or enjoyment,� Starks said. �I took up the sport while teaching high school in Saginaw, Mich.�

Starks is the cornerstone of the team�s success.

According to golfstat.com, Tennessee State is ranked 123rd in the country, of 325 Division I golf teams. The Tigers won the local 2004 Belmont Invitational at the Legends Club of Tennessee on April 6. They shot a final round score of 280 and finished with a tournament record 851.

Tennessee State has an all-white team this season. However, the inaugural men�s golf team was all black and consisted of two injured football players, two other men and a woman.

�I really wish people would stop playing the race card,� Starks said. �I want to be competitive and not just say �I was a coach of a team.��

Junior Robert Dinwiddie is piling up honors.

Junior Robert Dinwiddie, a native of Barnard Castle, England, ranks 39 out of 250 potentials in the Golfstat Cup standings. He captured medalist honors for the second time this spring in a tournament at Belmont University in Nashville.

Dinwiddie was named Ohio Valley Conference Golfer of the Week twice this spring. He was both OVC and Golfweek National Player of the Week for his performance in the Samford Invitational Tournament. Dinwiddie leads the Ohio Valley Conference with a 70.9 stroke average.

When the team competed May 7-9 in the 18th National Minority Golf Championship, Tennessee State finished behind Johnson & Wales University of North Miami Beach in Division I, with a team total of 882. Dinwiddie finished in second place behind Adam Scrimenti of Johnson & Wales, with a three-day total of 8-under-par 208.

�I feel like the golf team is doing an excellent job,� said Tyreka Banks, a junior from Memphis majoring in speech communication and theater. �They represent TSU well.�

But Tennessee State has yet to host a tournament.

�I have everything on paper that is needed to host a tournament here,� Starks said. �If I was able to host a tournament here, then I can invite other teams and that will get us into the bigger tournaments.�

She said the golf team doesn�t have a predetermined schedule, unlike softball, football and soccer. It has to be invited to participate in tournaments.

Roughly 10 percent, or 2.4 million of today�s golfers, are racial minorities, including blacks and Native Americans, according to the National Golf Foundation. An estimated 882,000 are blacks and some 851,000 are Asian/Pacific Islanders. The remaining 712,000 are self-identified by survey respondents as �other,� which includes Native Americans and mixed races.

Nyre Williams, a former Tennessee State golf player, said, �I really don�t think black families know what it takes to prepare their child for a career in golf. We did the ground work for what the team is doing now. We were the TSU golf forefathers.�

Williams is director of the First Tee Foundation of Nashville, �a World Golf Foundation initiative dedicated to providing young people of all backgrounds an opportunity to develop, through golf and character education, life-enhancing values such as honesty, integrity and sportsmanship,� according to its press material.

�I am so happy to have one of my own to come back and start something,� Starks said of Williams. �It can�t stop there. The parents must make the initial step to help kids learn the skill for this level; (college) is not the time to learn.�

Tamika Jefferson, a student at Tennessee State University, is sports editor of The Meter.

Posted May 7, 2004; Updated May 9, 2004