The University of Houston-Victoria has hired its first two golf coaches for its expanding athletics staff.

Whitney Stromgren will lead the women’s golf team, while Brian Williamson will coach the men’s team. Both programs will start in the fall.

Brian Williamson

Williamson has been a professional golfer and international professional teacher for more than 25 years. He estimates he has given more than 35,000 lessons in more than 35 countries. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he played on the golf team for four years and was a member of the 1981 Southwest Conference Championship team. He also is the golf and teaching professional at the Cuero Golf Course. He and his wife, Sonya, live on their ranch between Victoria and Cuero.

“I am very excited to be part of the start of what I am sure will be a long tradition of golf at UHV,” Williamson said. “We will have a first-class program and hope to attract and develop talent from many places.”

Whitney Stromgren

Stromgren played for four years with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s golf team, a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division 1 program. During her time there, she served as a team captain and was named to the NCAA Division 1 All-Independent Golf Team. After graduation, she remained with the program as the graduate assistant golf coach under Carol Blackmar during the 2006-07 season.

“I am ecstatic about the future of our women’s golf program at UHV,” she said. “Starting a program from the ground up is a tremendous opportunity.”

Generous community support helped pave the way, she noted.

“I am amazed at the outstanding job our community has done in coming together to raise scholarship money for the women’s and men’s golf programs,” she said. “This will be such a positive factor in being able to recruit the best collegiate athletes we can.” Both new coaches will be a good fit for the university, Athletics Director Ashley Walyuchow said.

“I am excited about the future of our golf program,” he said. “We have two very good coaches who have played at the highest level you can in college golf.  They understand the types of players it takes to win and will help those players develop their full potentials while they are at UHV.”

The new team will offer area student golfers a place to hone their skills and compete without having to travel far from home to do it.

“There are a lot of good golfers in the area who can play at the next level and many who will want to come here to be a part of these pioneering programs,” Walyuchow said. “I expect us to be very competitive in our first season.”

For more information about the UHV golf team or the growing athletics program, visit www.uhvjaguars.com. UHV also will be adding soccer in the fall and will be hiring coaches for the men’s and women’s teams soon.