SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Last year at Grayhawk Golf Club, Blaine Woodruff was wrapping up his final moments as an assistant at Pepperdine, a program he helped coach to an NCAA title and another national-semifinals appearance on this golf course. By then, Woodruff already knew what was next for him; he had accepted the head position at Chattanooga, and he and his wife, Katie, then the women’s assistant at USC, would soon be moving across the country to start the next big chapter of their lives.
From the get-go, Woodruff had his work cut out for him. The Mocs, no longer a top-100 program, didn’t have a schedule set, and the roster lacked enough players to field a full lineup. Plus, one of the squad’s top guys, Paul Conroy, had entered the transfer portal.
But after a year of remarkable resiliency, both on and off the golf course, Woodruff found himself back in the Arizona desert for a third straight year, leading Chattanooga to its first NCAA Championship appearance since 2012. On Sunday, the Mocs’ magical – and emotional – the season came to an end with a T-23 finish.
“I’m so proud of these guys and what they’ve done this year,” Woodruff said. “I was thinking about it this whole week like, a year ago, knowing I was going there, then being back here with this team, it was just surreal. These guys are unbelievable. They bought in from the start, and to watch them grow as players and more importantly as people, accepting each other and pushing each other, they’re everything a coach could ask for.”
This performance was arguably more meaningful than any national championship.
Not only did Woodruff show off his evaluation skills by constructing a competitive lineup with a mix of returners – Conroy, who withdrew from the portal, and 22-year-old sophomore Braeden Wear – and transfers – Oklahoma’s Garrett Engle, D-II King College’s Samuel Espinosa and NAIA Tennessee Wesleyan’s John Houk. He also received full buy-in.
“He sold me in a heartbeat,” Engle said. “When I decided to come here, I didn’t really know what to expect. We had a lot of guys who I didn’t even know, but we’ve all come together as a team and enjoyed each other not even knowing what was going to happen this year.”
Wear remembers the tragic day like it was yesterday. It was March 23, and the team had just arrived at McLemore Club for a qualifying round. The course is some 40 minutes from Chattanooga’s campus, so Wear was surprised to see a couple of members of the athletic department there – and no Coach Woodruff. Wear and his teammates knew that Katie was nine months pregnant with their first child, a girl, Riley Grace, and scheduled for a C-section that weekend, so perhaps Riley Grace had decided to come a little early. The faces on the two staff members and assistant Nick Robinson, though, told a different story.
“That’s when they broke the news to us,” Wear said.
The night before, Katie began feeling painful contractions and the Woodruffs rushed to the hospital. After a series of tests, which started off seemingly normal but then became terribly long, doctors told Blaine and Katie that Riley Grace didn’t have a heartbeat; the umbilical cord had wrapped three times around her neck.
They had lost their baby girl.
“Delivering a baby is difficult enough,” Blaine wrote for Golf Channel shortly after the loss of Riley Grace, “but having to deliver your baby when you know there won’t be a cry as they emerge must be the worst thing in the entire world. I’ve never cried so many tears, not just for our loss but for what Katie was having to go through.”
When doctors delivered Riley Grace that next morning, they first placed her in Blaine’s arms.
“You hear and you read about this moment, becoming a parent and how it changes you forever once you hold your child for the first time,” he wrote. “Even in our circumstances, I don’t think it was different. She was beautiful and perfect in every way, even though her soul was already with our Heavenly Father. … God gave us a perfect daughter that lived a perfect life.”
The days that followed were some of the hardest for the Woodruffs. Leaving the hospital without their daughter. Arriving back home to an empty nursery. Deleting the baby apps they had downloaded to track sleep and feeding schedules.
The Mocs had a tournament in just over a week’s time at Wofford, but Blaine chose not to travel with the team; he needed to be with Katie.
His players understood. They were grieving, too. Some of them, including Engle, didn’t pick up a club for a few days. But when it was time to leave for Spartanburg, South Carolina, they knew what they had to do.
“It was a really hard time,” Engle said. “I didn’t even want to go outside honestly. But after that, we all got together, we were all upset, but we knew we had to go win that golf tournament not only for him but for Riley Grace.”
And they did. And they also won the next one, at Indiana, this time with Blaine and Katie in attendance. A couple weeks later, at the SoCon Championship, Chattanooga led conference rival East Tennessee State on the final nine before finishing second.
And then, in the most miraculous moment of all, the Mocs grabbed the 18-hole lead at a loaded NCAA Auburn Regional and easily advanced to nationals with a third-place finish, just two shots back of No. 1 Vanderbilt.
“What happened, it put everything in perspective, like yeah, this game is important, but it’s not everything,” Wear said, “We were just trying to be there for him, to come together for him. We rallied behind him and just tried to make him proud.”
Added Engle: “Coach has never wavered through all this. It’s all bigger than golf and he really allowed us to see it. He’s been so strong the entire time, and he’s been a great example to all of us to just remain at peace.”
When the Mocs first arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona, last Wednesday, Katie was already waiting for them. With the USC women making the NCAA final, Katie needed to be there to root on her former players. Although that also meant her first night away from Blaine since Riley Grace’s death.
“It was rough,” Katie said. “But when I saw our Mocs family show up at the hotel, it just felt warm.”
Creating that family in Chattanooga was Blaine’s main goal in his debut season, and he succeeded, Katie said, with patience.
“He sees the whole picture,” Katie said. “As a coach myself, I’m very impatient, and we complement each other in that way. But I think he’s so patient and just wants the guys to see it themselves, help them see the big picture, and he’s made these guys believe.”
Added Blaine: “Going after the guys’ hearts is the most important thing. Understanding that everybody’s different, there’s no blueprint or cookie-cutter method to coach a player, each guy’s different, but if you show them that you care about them, then the other stuff can be pretty cool.”
Although Chattanooga entered Sunday’s third round well behind making the top 15, Blaine reminded his players that there was still much to play for. They responded, like they have all season, and shot 5 over, tied for the second-best round of the afternoon wave. The Mocs also finished seven shots better than ETSU.
As his final player putt out on Grayhawk’s ninth hole, Blaine was down on one knee, just outside the rope line, taking it all in.
Katie was just a few yards behind him.
“You’re going to make me cry talking about just how proud I am of him,” Katie said. “When he got the job this time last year, regionals was kind of a dream… and now to see what this team has accomplished, to see their heart. What they’ve done, it’s unbelievable.”
Their season over, Blaine huddled his guys, yellow ribbons pinned to each of their hats, for one final speech. Easily the most emotional of his career, Woodruff said afterwards. There were tears, thoughts, but most of all, hope.
On the heels of their top-25 national finish, the Mocs don’t figure to be going anywhere. All five starters will be back for a team that will finish the season ranked inside the top 40 nationally.
All of them eager to build on the most tragic yet rewarding year of their lives.
All of them inspired to go win more for Riley Grace.
“It gives me chills, really,” Pepperdine head coach Michael Beard said. “Just their year with their team, with Blaine and Katie moving there, getting adjusted, and then obviously with Riley Grace, it’s all been a lot. I ran into Blaine in the practice round, and I asked him, ‘Did you think you ‘d be here a year later? … Yeah, they’re not going to make match play, but that’s not how it all works all the time. They got here, now they believe that they are one of these teams.”
For Blaine, summing up the past 12 months was a near impossible task.
“Man, just a roller coaster,” he said, fighting back tears. “But so thankful for these guys, so thankful for you and the Golf Channel for sharing our story, and just the whole golf community in general, there’s a lot of good people that are in this. And I knew that before, but after what happened, we really saw it. I just couldn’t be more thankful, and this golf stuff is really cool, too, but it was all secondary.
“To see the guys come together as a team, and how they played for her, and played for me and Katie was special.”
In his mind, they were all champions.