While Christopher Newport looks forward to the return of intercollegiate competitions, CNUSports.com will spend some time throughout the fall semester looking back at a few of the more memorable moments in the storied history of the athletic department. Over the course of the next three months, the Captains will honor the anniversary of three dozen record-setting accomplishments, championship-clinching victories, and other historic events in order to celebrate the past while preparing for more great moments in the future.
 
AT A GLANCE
 
When a school announces the addition of a new sport, growing pains are expected. Building success takes time. For Christopher Newport women's golf, though, that simply was not the case. After announcing the 24^th varsity sport at Christopher Newport on October 30, 2015, the Captains first took the course for competition on September 11-12, 2017. Nearly two years after the announcement, Christopher Newport wasted no time at all putting their name on the map with a convincing win on September 12, 2017 at the Bay Creek Invitational in the program's first ever tournament.
 
BACKSTORY
After capturing the first conference championship in Christopher Newport men's golf history during the 2011 season, head coach Jamie Coleman and the Captains athletics administration began discussing the possibility of adding women's golf into the fold. The conversation became reality in October of 2015 when Christopher Newport's Executive Vice President Bill Brauer announced the addition of women's golf with an immediate expectation of championship-caliber competition.
 
Little did anyone know just how much Coleman would take that to heart. From the outset, the head coach for the Captains talked about an ability to compete at a national level right from the very beginning. His inaugural recruiting class would feature five freshmen including future All-American Erica Whitehouse.
 
Competing in the Capital Athletic Conference, Coleman devised a schedule that would prepare the Captains for the league championship. It would start at the Bay Creek Invitational.  
 
TOURNAMENT RECAP
Serving as a conference championship preview for the CAC, the Bay Creek Invitational invited four teams to compete at the site of the 2018 league tournament. The Captains were facing Goucher College, Southern Virginia University, and York College of Pennsylvania in the event played on the Palmer Course at the Bay Creek Resort in Cape Charles, Va.
 
Leaning on the excellence of the aforementioned rookie class, the Captains raced out to a dominating lead after the first round. Whitehouse opened with a first-round 78 (+6) to pace the Christopher Newport scoring while Cameron Cook (+11) and Katie Thome (+12) were in third- and fourth-place respectively following the first 18 holes. All five players finished in the top half of the leaderboard with sub-100 scores.
 
After shaking off the jitters of competing collegiately for the first time in program history, the Captains made sure the first tournament would be a memorable one with a record-setting victory at Bay Creek. CNU scored three of the top four finishes individually and won the event by 84 strokes as a team. Whitehouse and Thome each signed for 76 (+4) in the second round and finished second and third on the leaderboard.
 
POSTSCRIPT
Startup success would be synonymous with the CNU women's golf team as they would go on to finish second at the Greene Turtle Invitational and 8^th at the W&L Generals Invite. In the spring, the Captains faced a challenging schedule for any year, let alone a first-year program, but assimilated to the competition nicely with a 17^th-place effort at the Jekyll Island Intercollegiate and an 11^th-place showing at the Sewanee Spring Invitational. Betwixt, Erica Whitehouse gave another preview of what was to come when she won a 27-hole rain-shortened event at the Max & Susan Stith Invitational.
 
She led CNU to a second-place finish as a team and captured her first career tournament win by three strokes over defending national champion Christina Herbert from Bridgewater College. Herbert, a four-time Division III All-American, has since moved on to accept the assistant golf coaching position at the University of Lynchburg in 2018.
 
Whitehouse's second career victory would come in mid-April of her and the Captains' first season when she helped Christopher Newport capture another dominating team win. This time, it was for the first ever CAC Championship as the CAC Rookie and Player of the Year finished the three-day tournament with a four-over final score. The Captains' historic win came courtesy of the program's lowest single round score of the year as the starting five signed for a 34-over 322 in the final round of the event. CNU won the team title by 141 strokes over second place York (Pa.).
 
The dominance displayed by the Captains in their first season foreshadowed the early success the team would enjoy for the first three years of the program. On April 12, 2019 the Captains earned the program's first ever national ranking in just their second year of existence; Whitehouse became the team's first ever All-American after qualifying for the NCAA Division III National Championships in May 2019; and in year three, the Captains won the first ever VSGA Women's Intercollegiate and finished in the top-10 at the Golfweek DIII Fall Invitational.
 
Though the youngest of Christopher Newport's varsity sports, the Captains women's golf team has established itself quickly as one of the most dangerous threats for opposing rosters on a national level.

For a full listing of the fall 2020 features published to date, click here.