By Andrew Sneddon
In many circles, they say it takes a village.
In the case of Central Michigan women’s golf, that village reaches far and wide.
When the Mount Pleasant university resurrected the program in 2014-15 after a 31-year hiatus, growth and success were expected, eventually. But the strides the Chippewas have made over the past three years are remarkable, and the uptick in performance coincides with the arrival of coach Jim Earle – and some international flights – in August 2018.
Earle’s Chippewas posted 2 third-place team finishes, a 4th and a 5th in five fall events during his first season. Prior to that, the Chippewas finished dead last, or close to it, in most every event in which they had played. 
Come the fall of 2019, barely a year after Earle’s arrival, the Chippewas broke through with their first win, at the Oakland Golden Grizzlies Invitational. And they did it with three freshmen in the lineup. Those freshmen not only helped deliver the Chippewas’ first championship trophy, but their collective arrival in Mount Pleasant just before the season signaled the direction that Earle was taking the program.
That trio comprised of Padgett Chitty of Valdosta, Ga. and internationals Zoe Vartyan of Austria and Claudia Salvador of Spain. To that point, just one player in the five-year history of the resurrected program had grown up outside the state of Michigan. In October of 2019, Salvador won the Purdue–Fort Wayne Mastodon Invitational. It was the first win for a Chippewa since the program’s re-birth.
CMU opened this spring season with a fifth-place finish in the 11-team Mid-American Conference Challenge in Florida, and then won back-to-back match-play events, the first hosted by North Carolina A&T, the second by Northern Kentucky. They then finished third in the 11-team Cleveland State Nevel Meade Collegiate.
Competition in Michigan is fierce for top-notch homegrown talent what with the state being home to seven Division I programs and several highly competitive Division II schools. Earle utilized the blueprint he had developed during highly successful stints as the head coach at Division II programs Missouri-St. Louis and Cal State Monterey Bay.
“When I was looking into the position and after my visit to Central Michigan and seeing what the commitment was from the athletic department, I felt like the resources were there for me to go out and recruit the type of player who could come in and have some immediate success,” Earle says.
Earle’s 2020 signing class brought more international flavor with Malaysian Ashley Goh and Canadian Mackenzie Baustad along with Rachel Kauflin of Wisconsin. There remain veteran players on the roster who make regular contributions – Meghan Deardorff of Clarkston and Jami Laude of Ann Arbor chief among them.
“Where else could they be part of a team with people from all over the world?” Earle added. “After their four years of college golf, they might remain friends forever and go visit each other in their respective countries across the world. It’s a pretty neat thing.”
The Chippewas have greatly benefitted from the support of a caring and vested group of alums – part of the village, if you will – including PXG founder Bob Parsons and his wife Renee, a CMU graduate and Mount Pleasant native. Then there’s alumni Rocky Ricelli and Michael O’Donnell, who have also played major roles in the program’s growth. Ricelli gifted the program a customized Mercedes traveling van and O’Donnell hosts the team annually in Arizona.
“We are ecstatic about our relationship with PXG. It sets us apart,” Earle said. “There’s no other mid-major in the country that has that relationship with a manufacturer, never mind the top manufacturer in the country.”
