Hunnell named HPU women's golf coach
Jun. 28—HIGH POINT — Lyndsey Hunnell piled up the conference championships as a player and assistant coach the past seven years.
Hunnell, the assistant coach at Campbell the past three seasons, now attempts to have similar success as the new head coach of the High Point University women's golf team, a program that has no Big South team championships and just two conference tournament medalists in 17 seasons.
She was introduced by HPU athletic director Dan Hauser at a press conference Monday,
"I've been dreaming of this since I walked into campus at the University of Virginia (as a player) and realized I could get paid to coach and be a part of golf all of my life," Hunnell said.
Hunnell was a member of ACC championship teams in 2016 and 2017 with the Cavaliers, who were then led by current Wake Forest coach Kim Lewellen. She helped lead Xavier to a Big East title as an All-Conference graduate student in 2019. As a member of the Campbell staff, she aided coach John Crooks in winning the 2021 and 2022 Big South titles (the 2020 tournament was canceled because of the pandemic).
"She's won conference championships in five of seven seasons — that's a sign of a leader and that's a sign of a winner," Hauser said. "That's what we wanted to do, find a leader and a winner."
Hunnell's plans for improving the program include recruiting international players and bringing in others through the transfer portal.
"I've learned a lot at Campbell as far as the level of athlete we can recruit," Hunnell said. "We can use this campus to attract players, and that's going to be huge ... It's going to be a mix of international, portal and domestic. Having those two other avenues is going to be huge in adding to the team."
International players were key pieces in this season's Campbell team, which won the school's seventh straight conference titles. Of the Camels' 10 players, eight were foreign — four from Sweden, one from Australia, one from Spain, one from France and one from the Philippines. The two domestic players were Emily Hawkins of Lexington (this year's conference player of the year) and Julie Fielder of New Bern.
"Overseas, they are more mature and they are older," Hunnell said. "They normally come in around 19 and they've gone to golf academies, so they are used to being away from home. It's not a big learning curve for them being away from home and getting homesick. That's been a big attribute at Campbell."
Hunnell also plans to elevate the visibility of the program by playing in more high-profile events.
"The big thing is getting into bigger tournaments and having that platform to showcase your program, compete against the best and see where you rank up," Hunnell said.
The Panthers could return as many as five players from a team that led after going into the final round of stroke play in the Big South tournament, then fell to fourth in final standings and missed the four-team match play portion on a tiebreaker.
Her goal is to challenge her former team for the conference championship.
"I look forward to being part of the Big South again and competing against my prior boss at Campbell," Hunnell said. "Hopefully we're going to make it a lot more interesting this year and a lot more difficult for Campbell."
