Baylor College issued the following announcement.
Women’s Golf Assistant Ludwig Promoted to Associate Head Coach
Baylor Bear Insider
When Jay Goble received an email from Carly Ludwig 2 ½ years ago, inquiring about an opening for the assistant coach's position with Baylor women's golf, he shot back a quick response: "Yes, who you got in mind?"
Truth is, Goble didn't think a California native who had both played and coached in her home state would leave Torrey Pines and the beach for a job in Waco, Texas.
"That's the funny part is I wasn't really thinking about her, because she had already been a head coach, and I knew she was from California," Goble said. "She was at San Diego State, and they're always a top-25, top-30 team in the country. So, I wasn't thinking she would come to Baylor."
Turns out, he was wrong.
What she really wanted was a chance to join an elite program that had finished in the top eight three times in the previous four years, including an NCAA runner-up finish in 2015.
"I had admired Jay and what he had done for Baylor," Ludwig said. "I knew I could learn a lot from him and felt like I could also help him. . . . I appreciate everything he's been able to do for me here. He's kind of re-inspired coaching for me. Being at this level, and doing it the way that we're doing it, I'm very proud to be a part of this program."
While Ludwig is still looking for her first trip to the NCAA Championships, Baylor earned its first-ever No. 1 ranking after sweeping the team and individual titles at the three fall tournaments.
"To go 3-for-3 in the fall . . . that's unprecedented, that's unbelievably cool to have happen in this kind of year and what we've been through," said Ludwig, who was promoted to associate head coach earlier this month. "For everything that we've been through, it was obviously the highlight of 2020, let alone the highlight of my coaching in career so far.
"How many teams get to say they were No. 1 in the country? It's something that all of us say we want to do, we want to accomplish it. But, to actually do it, that's so absolutely cool."
Excelling in team sports growing up, Carly was introduced to golf when she moved to Indiana at 7 years old, but "it was the only sport that didn't really come natural to me."
"I was so angry after I would go to practice, and I was like, 'Yeah, I have to stick with this,''' she said. "Team sports were great, but I love the individual portion where it just rides on your shoulders."
Initially intending to be a walk-on for the golf team, Carly suffered a torn meniscus playing pick-up basketball as a sophomore at Indiana University.
"I had to go to class in the snow, and here I am on crutches," she said. "I couldn't even get into my apartment because I had to go upstairs with no elevator. I was like, 'Well, this is terrible.' I missed golf, and I need to find some place where I can play. I just need to know I can go to school year-around without snow."
Moving back to the West Coast, she was a three-year letterwinner for the golf team at Cal State San Marcos. As a senior, she earned All-America honors, placing sixth at the 2008 NAIA Championship and helping the Cougars finish third nationally. She was also the NAIA Region II Player of the Year after winning medalist honors at the region tournament.
Stephanie Segura Boucree, the Cal State San Marcos assistant coach at the time, has "probably been the most influential in my own golf career, coaching career, everything. She's been phenomenal for me."
"We had a Director of Golf, and he and I did not get along on the golf course, by any means," Carly said. "He was a coach that led by threats, and that didn't really work well with me. But, Stephanie was on the complete opposite side of that. She came from a place of love. And I like to think that's probably where I come from now as well."
After graduating with a degree in kinesiology in 2008, Carly spent three years on the staff at The Santaluz Club in San Diego, gaining experience as a golf instructor and managing the course's tournament operations. She also competed professionally on the Symetra Tour (formerly the LPGA Futures Tour) for two years.
"I think I wanted to know if I could do it," she said. "And if my bucket list tipped one direction, that would have been cool. But if it didn't, I knew it was an experience that no one was going to be able to take away from me. And I would be able to say that I chased after something that a lot of people think I couldn't have done.
"Every single player that has the inkling of going pro, I say go do it. It doesn't matter if you go in debt, it doesn't matter if you don't make it or anything like that. There are so many different aspects that are so incredibly valuable when you try to chase after something pretty unobtainable for most people."
That experience as a player, both collegiately and professionally, helped mold Carly into the coach that she's become.
"She's played at the highest level in college and she's played professionally," Goble said. "She knows the grind, she knows what it's like to do the things they want to do. And I think it makes her very relatable to them. She does an amazing job with the team. When they need to talk, I'm sure Carly is the first person they call. If they need something, they call me."
Carly's life and career took a turn at 24, when she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. In the blink of an eye, "your whole world gets flipped upside down."
"Everything you thought you knew about yourself needs to be different," she said. "It went from, 'Hey, I'm going to chase after this wild dream,' to 'Hey, I need stability. I need health insurance and all these grown-up things. I need a routine.' Which is funny, because there is no routine in college."
That's the route she took, though, landing the job as the head women's golf coach at Division I Central Connecticut State in New Britain. She earned 2013 Northeast Conference Coach of the Year honors in 2013, leading the Blue Devils to a second-place finish.
"I was so far over my head. I learned on the fly," she said. "I learned what not to do. I feel so bad for those girls, to be honest, that dealt with me in those beginning years, because I didn't know what I was doing. . . . I led with an iron fist, which was exactly what I was not wanting to do. But, I was 25, trying to put my stamp on something. When you're thrown into the fire, you kind of learn quickly."
After serving in a dual role as the acting head coach of the CCSU men's golf team during the 2014-15 season, helping the Blue Devils to a fifth-place showing at conference, Carly moved back to California and was "so over coaching at that point."
"I was coaching both programs, with no assistant," she said. "One weekend, I was dropping off the men's team and then had to drive to Rhode Island to meet the women's team. I was like, 'This is ridiculous.' I was in a pretty bad place, health-wise, and I felt like I needed to move back to San Diego."
Jumping back into coaching, she was an assistant for three years at San Diego State, helping the Aztecs earn three-straight NCAA Regional berths. In 2018, they finished a program-best seventh place at the San Francisco Regional, missing the NCAA Championships by a single stroke.
That, more than anything, is what motivated her to take a chance with the move to Waco and out of her comfort zone in California.
"She essentially told me, 'I've been coaching for 10 years now, and I've never been to the (NCAA Championship). I really want an opportunity to go compete for a national championship, to put that on my resume and become a better coach,''' Goble said. "Granted, here we are in her third year and we haven't been to a national championship. But, I think you can see that the team we've built together and the team we're building for the future is pretty amazing."
Baylor dominated the season-opening Schooner Fall Classic, winning by 31 strokes with a team that included four players recruited since Ludwig arrived. While things were shut down this past spring because of COVID-19, she visited 15 different countries on the recruiting trail the year before.
"She's really helped put Baylor on the map when it comes to (international coaches) trying to place their best players," Goble said. "She's as instrumental as somebody could be in bringing in these great players to Baylor."
To that end, Goble pushed for Ludwig's promotion from assistant coach to associate head coach, effective at the start of December. He told Vice President and Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades and Deputy Athletics Director Dawn Rogers that Ludwig is "the best assistant coach in the country."
"It was just essentially to show her how much we appreciate her and what she's done for the program," Goble said. "I think when she decides to go to the right job for her, she's going to be a great head coach."
Two of Goble's previous three assistants are now head coaches, with Diane Cantu at Maryland and Ryan Ashburn at UAB. But, because of the unique support from Baylor and the Waco community, Carly said, "it's got to be the right situation" for her to make that kind of move.
"We feel like we're part of something bigger here," she said. "Here in Waco, you feel a part of an unbelievable support system here. . . . Would I like to be a head coach again? Yeah, I think you always have that in the back of your mind that you want to lead your own program. But, what we have here is really incredible."
While she understands that Goble makes the final call, "I trust that he's going to make the decisions that are right for this program, and he trusts me to give him maybe the answers that he doesn't want to hear."
The running joke, she said, "is that I'm the one who wears the pants, because I pay for everything."
"That's 100% a Gurleen (Kaur) quote," Carly said of the fourth-year junior. "And in every acceptance speech we had this fall, Jay would say, 'And I've just really got to say to the one who wears the pants: Thank you so much.'''
In the rare times when she's not on the golf course, on the road recruiting or in the office, Carly likes to remodel or "build stuff," a passion she shares with her dad. She has built a bench and Adirondack chairs for Jay, redid a fireplace and bathroom for her longtime friend and former coach, Stephane Boucree, and remodeled her own home in Woodway.
"That's always been kind of like my dad's side business," Carly said. "He's always loved construction, loved building, that type of stuff. He flipped some houses in Southern California in the '70s. But, he's flown here about three times to help me with my house. He comes in for about a week, and we just get it done. I've learned a lot."
Original source can be found here.
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