Golf Head Coach Chuck Scheinost spent his college life in dark rooms editing movies.
But when Scheinost reached his senior year of college, he realized he could not spend hours on end editing in a dark, locked room. Preferring blue skies and green roughs, Scheinost said he decided to pursue his life’s second love, golf.
“I started searching around, knew I loved golf, and so I applied for pretty much anything and everything that summer,” he said.
Before becoming GW’s head coach in 2013, Scheinost spent six seasons coaching at the University of Northern Colorado, where he transformed the program from a brand-new Division I program to a contender in the America Sky Golf Conference.
During his tenure at GW, the team recorded three top-four finishes at the Atlantic 10 Championships. The Colonials have hit their stride in the past two years, shattering multiple program records like breaking the low round record in 2022, which was just set a couple of years before under his leadership.
Scheinost grew up playing recreational golf with his parents. He said he got to play on a more challenging course during a trip to Myrtle Beach in ninth grade where he became interested in competing, which led him to try out for his high school golf team.
Scheinost began his coaching career after graduating from Hastings College in 2004 when he joined Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina as an assistant coach during the 2004-05 season. During his first season with the Lenior-Rhyne Bears, the women’s team boasted five All-South Atlantic Conference golfers and ranked 16th nationally in Division 2.
Scheinost said he came to GW due to his “connection” with D.C. as he would visit the city every Thanksgiving vacation with his college roommates since one of them lived in the District. He said his time coaching the Northern Colorado golf program opened up opportunities around the country, leading to GW approaching him for the top position.
He said the GW team was in a “little bit of disarray” and had no golf gear or practice facilities when he joined in 2013. But he said he leveraged his meeting with former President Donald Trump, whom he met at the PGA Junior World Championship in July of 2013, to get a personal introduction to the Country Club At Woodmore general manager, where the GW team began to practice.
“When I got here, our seniors had not played 18 holes of qualifying, they hadn’t hit balls off a grass range,” Scheinost said. “They didn’t really practice on the weekends; it wasn’t treated as a serious D1 program, it was kind of treated almost like a club.”
Scheinost said when he came to GW, he wanted to set a different tone and make the program more competitive after it spent a season with six last-place tournament finishes in 2012. But he said changing the culture started as a slow process due to pushback from his first classes when introducing his new training system where players had to train weekly rather than just on weekends. He said the team’s mindset began to change when alumnus Logan Lowe joined the program in 2016.
Lowe was the only freshman to make the team that season when he broke multiple program records, like tying for the second best 54-shot low score in the Elon Phoenix Invitational and would go on to record the lowest round in school history with a 65 in the Marshall Invitational in his sophomore year.
“I’ve unofficially named the Freshman of the Year Award in the conference the Logan Lowe Freshman of the Year Award because they didn’t have one at the time,” Scheinost said. “Logan was the only freshman on the conference team.”
Scheinost’s coaching style relies on personality tests to understand how to blend the players’ different personalities and ensure they think of collegiate golf as a group sport, not an individual one.
Scheinost said COVID-19 split a close-knit 2020 team, making it difficult for the team to build chemistry since they were unable to practice together. He said the downtime during quarantine and the subsequent rise of online communication allowed him to recruit more players from other countries like Mexico, China and the Philippines.
Scheinost added internationally ranked Filipino freshman Jed Dy, who has won 100 golf tournaments, including three Junior World Championships and appeared in the Netflix golf documentary “The Short Game.” Dy is also a member of the Philippine National Team this season.
“I think they’ve realized that a big piece of trying to bring a team together on an individual sport is getting guys that are going to fight through tough rounds,” Scheinost said about the current players. “Because they care too much about the guys next to him to break down and give in.”
Scheinost said this year, the team has put in extra practice on the green and in the golf simulator, which has set them up for an A-10 Championship run.
He said this year, the team has been able to keep up with nationally ranked teams like No. 30 Oregon State, losing by just one round in their match at Seattle U Redhawk Collegiate in the first weekend of April. Scheinost said he is emphasizing the word “fearless” to the team this season to ensure players are not hindered by the fear of making mistakes. He said the emphasis has allowed them to adopt a freer style of golf where they can play without unnecessary pressure.
Scheinost said winning the conference would be the “icing on the cake” to an incredible season after the team notched a pair of third-place finishes at the Savannah Intercollegiate and the Ross College Classic. He said the team has the chance to continue their success next season because every player reportedly plans to return.
“The big thing we’ve talked about is we have to get away from thinking winning is the ultimate definition of success because it’s hard to win,” Scheinost said. “We can’t control someone going and shooting a great score, but we can control our process. We can control being ourselves.”