Oda Kilsti became the third head coach in the history of the program on August 28, 2025 and begins her first year at Christopher Newport in 2025-26.
Kilsti has spent the last five years as a member of the community at East Carolina University where she studied and played women’s golf for the Pirates. One of the top players in program history, Kilsti finished her Pirate career with a career scoring average of 74.05 ranking third all-time.
A native of Skodje, Norway, competed with the Norwegian National Team and was a member of the Aalesund Golfklubb that claimed the Norwegian Team Championship. After several marquee performances in Norway, she was recruited to play in the United States by ECU where she put together an outstanding collegiate career.
Despite being limited by the CoVID-19 global pandemic in her first year, Kilsti competed in two events as a freshman and earned All-Academic Team honors. As a sophomore, she competed in five events and repeated as an All-Academic team selection while earning WGCA All-American Scholar honors for the first time. In her first full season as a junior, she led the team in scoring and earned her first collegiate victory with a first place finish in the Pirate Collegiate Classic. She added two more top five finishes and was named the AAC Women’s Golfer of the Month for September.
Over her final two seasons, she continued to lead the way for the Pirates as a starter in 18 tournaments. Her impressive run included adding the fourth-best single season scoring average in program history with a 73.3 over 33 rounds in 2022-23. She competed in 34 career events and logged 32 rounds at par or better including a career-low 67. All the while, she continued her stellar performance in the classroom and became just the eighth ECU player ever to earn WGCA All-American Scholar honors in four consecutive years.
In 2024, she added Academic All-District plaudits from the College Sports Communicators while double majoring in Interpersonal/Organizational Communication and Political Science. Kilsti earned her bachelor’s degrees in 2024 and went on to secure her Master of Arts in Strategic Communication in 2025.
