GHS golf and girls’ basketball coach Kari Williams named
assistant golf coach at NYC’s Columbia University
Gilroy – Kari Williams brought the Gilroy girls’ basketball team to the top of the Tri-County Athletic League.
Now, she’ll be trying to do the same for the Columbia University golf team in the Ivy League.
On Tuesday, the New York City-based university officially named Williams – who also was the head coach for the GHS boys’ and girls’ golf teams this year – an assistant coach for the men’s and women’s golf programs. The University of Hawaii grad will work mostly with the women’s team when she heads to the East Coast school in early July.
“I’ve wanted to be a college coach since I was 18 and saw my coach’s job (at Hawaii),” said Williams, 35, who golfed for the Rainbow Wahine from 1989 to 1994. “I’m super-excited that someone is giving me the chance to coach Division I golf.”
Gilroy athletic director Jack Daley brought Williams – who teaches marketing and merchandising and hospitality management in the school’s Regional Occupational Program – on board to take over the girls’ basketball program in 2002. This past year, she also took over head coaching duties for the GHS boys’ and girls’ golf programs.
“We’re certainly going to miss her. She has done just an outstanding job with her girls’ (basketball) program, with the golf programs, as a teacher,” Daley said. “From coaching to teaching to just her as a human being, she’s going to be tough to replace.”
Although she’s better known for coaching basketball at Gilroy High, golf is the sport in which Williams has the most experience. She won her first tournament – a ladies’ tournament – at nine years old in her home state of Wyoming.
“Then they made a rule that I couldn’t play anymore (in that tournament) until I was 14,” Williams laughed.
At Hawaii, Williams was a top-three golfer on the team and played No. 1 her senior year. Before turning pro and playing on the Futures Tour and Kosaido Asian Tour, Williams won the Jennie K. Wilson Invitational – the most prestigious amateur tournament in Hawaii – in 1994 and 1999. Two years after Williams’ second win, a young Michelle Wie won the Jennie K. title.
Williams played professional golf for three years – “until I ran out of sponsor money,” she says – before starting to coach at GHS.
In just four years, Williams revamped the GHS girls’ basketball program. The Mustangs finished 18-10 and 13-17, respectively, in the coach’s first two seasons. During 2003-2004 in that second season, however, the young squad made a surprise run to the championship game of the Division I Central Coast Section playoffs before falling to Salinas. From there, Gilroy continued to improve under the guidance of Williams, finishing 20-10 in 2004-2005. But it was this past season that was Williams’ crowning achievement. The team had one of the most successful seasons in Gilroy High basketball history, going undefeated in the TCAL to win the league title and finishing 23-5 after suffering an upset to Carlmont in the second round of the CCS playoffs.
“She raised expectations,” Daley said of Williams. “(The team) complained a lot that first year that she was too hard on them…She always jokes about how she’s gotten soft (since then).”
Williams said she’s most proud of the fact that all but one of the players she’s graduated from her program have gone on to college.
“I don’t know what I’ll remember most,” Williams said. “I have lots of good memories from all four years.”
She added, “I guess I’m surprised at how attached I got…I’m very proud of the program.”
At Columbia, Williams will again get the chance to guide a fairly new program looking to establish itself. The school only has had a women’s golf team since 2002.
“I’m very excited about where I’m going, to New York City,” Williams said. “I’m most excited that the program is young…I want to come in and put my experience out there and build a program of championship caliber and win an Ivy League championship and even be competitive on the national level.”
Building that type of success could take time – the Lions took fifth at the seven-team Ivy League Championships. But that’s right up Williams’ alley.
“The challenge,” she said. “Is what usually drives me.”
