Excellence endeavor

Twenty-one years after embarking on a visionary hockey plan that reinvigorated the school, a new tradition has set foot on the Romanesque campus of Shattuck-St. Mary’s.

The school is adding golf to its prestigious Centers of Excellence, joining hockey, soccer and figure skating as elite 10-month programs that compete at the highest levels of prep athletics.

And one man has been charged with building this elite golf program: Mike Higdon.

On April 18, SSM’s new Director of Golf began the unenviable task of building a national program from scratch.

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Higdon sat at his desk in the athletic office on his second week of work, dressed in a green shirt and khakis. The shelves behind his head lay bare save for a couple golf trophies and a scattering of three-ring notebooks. He’s obviously been too busy to decorate; too intent on spreading the word out about this new enterprise.

“I think there’s some challenges as far as letting people know what we have going,” Higdon said. “That’s the main thing we need to focus on right now, is letting people know what we have here and the opportunities that we have on hand, which I think are phenomenal.”

The foundation of his plan is to build off the success of the Centers of Excellence, which have created national championships in hockey, U.S. National team members in soccer and National Champion figure skaters.

“It’s going to help me in the recruiting process for me to be able to say, ‘Look, this is what we’ve been able to do in the past with these other Centers of Excellence,’” Higdon said. “This isn’t going to be any different. We’re going to have the same expectations. In 20 years you’re going to be looking at 20 golfers here who are highly-ranked, nationally-competitive golfers.”

His plan is nothing if not grandiose (he said he’s expecting “success on a national and world basis”), but this is a man who has done this before.

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In 2009, Higdon was hired as the men’s and women’s head golf coach at Valparaiso University in Indiana. The only problem? Valparaiso didn’t have a golf program. There had never been a women’s team, and the men’s team had been cut in 1992. By the fall, Higdon had the Crusaders competing in the Division I Horizon League.

“It was an extensive process of putting that program together that I think will help me in designing this program,” he said. “Obviously, one of our main goals here is to get these golfers onto the collegiate level and beyond and I have the experience and the contacts I’ve gained at the collegiate level.”

“We’re going to be starting a new program and he’s been involved in starting them and he also has the golf experience and the background,” SSM Athletic Director Scott Curwin said. “Both of those things, I think, made the difference as far as Mike becoming a part of this program and this school.”

Higdon has also spent five years as general manager at The Course at Aberdeen and been both a head pro and assistant pro in Palm Beach, Fla. He graduated from Western Kentucky University with a degree in marketing, then spent a couple years at a marketing firm before returning to his true passion: Golf.
Higdon was one of three candidates an advisory board — made up of town residents, SSM alumni and board members — brought to campus for interviews after posting the job on the NCAA job market.
“Mike ended up being the best choice,” Curwin said.

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The new golf program will begin in the fall of 2011. Curwin said he hoped to have three to six golfers the first year. The school will continue its boys and girls golf teams that compete in the Minnesota State High School League. The Center of Excellence Golf Program will run nearly year round, competing in nationally-ranked junior events in the fall, winter and spring. The team will practice in the Dane Family Field House in the winter, as well as the pavilion at The Legacy. Even when students go home for the summer, they will still be training.

“They’ll go through all summer,” Curwin said. “Mike will put together a schedule for where those kids are from. If there is an event that maybe five of our kids are going to, Mike will probably show up and see how our kids are doing over the summer.”

As Higdon starts a rigorous recruiting process, he will begin by searching Minnesota and surrounding states for interested prospects. He will offer them a new level of one-on-one attention.

“The good golfers throughout the Midwest that are dedicated to becoming national golfers may work with their golf instructor once a week during the wintertime, whereas here they’ll have the avenue to work with me on a daily basis,” he said. “Having that exposure and experience will help elevate their games even more. You can’t measure what the advantages of that are."

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It’s hard to ignore the question. What brought a man who has worked courses in sunny Florida and coached at the Division I level to take on such a hallenge at a small private school in the chilly Midwest?

“When you see what they’ve been able to do in the past, that was key to see that they’re truly dedicated to allowing kids to pursue their passion,” Higdon said. “Whether it be hockey or figure skating or academics or singing, seeing that a school is dedicated to that and education at the same time. Kids can get a great education while doing their passion. Seeing the rich history here of what the school is about really attracted me.”

A few minutes earlier, standing in the doorway of his office, Curwin had expressed the same sentiment when describing the driving force behind the Centers of Excellence.

“What we do here at the Centers for Excellence is allow kids to pursue their passion,” he said.
And thus the journey begins.