Nov. 19, 2014
In her fifth season at Vanderbilt, associate head coach Holly Clark has played an instrumental role in the success of the women’s golf program. Clark and head coach Greg Allen have led the Commodores to a program-record five straight NCAA Championship appearances and the 2014 SEC Championship. The Morristown, Tenn., native played collegiately at Tennessee, where she was an Academic All-American. Just months after she graduated from college, she started the golf program at Division II Carson Newman, where she was the head coach for three years.
What were the enjoyable and challenging parts of starting a golf program?
The most challenging was probably the fact the girls were my age. One of them was one of my teammates in college and she transferred in (from Tennessee). That’s hard. It’s hard to discipline a team of girls close to your age because you’re not sure they are going to listen to what you have to say…I expected so much out of those girls. In turn, I’m sure they probably expected a lot out of me. I was probably a lot harder than I ever needed to be. I look back and I just was young and didn’t know any different.
How much did that experience as a head coach help you in your transition to Vanderbilt?
I wore a lot of hats as a head coach. We didn’t have the resources as we do here, so you learn to make due with a tiny budget. We were cooking dinner in the hotel room to have food to go with us. The first trip I took with my team, we drove to Jacksonville, Fla., and I never had driven a 15-passenger van. And I drove that sucker to Florida and back in three days. It was crazy. You learn to be a nutritionist and sports psychologist and (athletic) trainer and coach. You name it. You do it. I was probably trying to give them the best experience I knew they could have. I think they were in for a rude awakening. I don’t think they expected to come in and play serious golf. I was all about it. But we came in and won our conference championship the first year. For me, that was rewarding. I was really pleased with how they did. But, looking back, I would have done things way differently. But it made coming here so much easier. I could really focus on the few things I really needed to get done and do them well.
You thought about going to med school. What direction did you want to go?
In college, in order to go to med school, you have to have a ton of volunteer hours. I worked in the (athletic) training room. I spent all my (10-20 volunteer hours a week) working in the training room. I worked at the hospital and whirlpool physical therapy, which was really a nice way of calling it wound care. Cleaning nasty, horrible open wounds and helping doctors do stitches, it is just about the craziest thing I’ve done. It was wild. I really wanted to go into pediatric orthopedics. I wanted to do surgery. When I got married and quickly realized I wanted a family, that being a surgeon was time demanding, plus being in school for a long time. It is an incredibly tough job…I started thinking, ‘OK, I’m going to be a coach for a little while longer and do I really feel like this is something in my heart I want to do.’ The more I got away from (medical school), the more I thought I really love coaching. I found a way I could still spend time with kids and do what I wanted to do. It just wasn’t operating on them. It is like operating while they’re awake. In a sense, it is the same kind of rewarding thing to me.
What would be your top moment since you’ve been at Vanderbilt? Winning an SEC Championship last year?
It is seeing these kids get here as young, clueless, immature kids and watching them grow and leave here knowing they’re going to go make a difference in the world and that they are good kids. They changed us more than we could ever change them. Renee Sobolewski just graduated and she’s awesome. I’ll get emotional talking about it, but she is cool. She is a good kid. When she came in here—we came in together—she was a loose cannon, ‘Hi! I’m here for my freshman year and I play golf.’ I was the new coach and she was the only freshman so I roomed with her on the road. Watching her grow from freshman year until she graduated was awesome. You could just see, it is like looking at a toddler, and seeing the wheels crank and watching them realize this is what life is about. It’s not about golf. It’s not about getting a 4.0. It’s about other stuff. She got it. That kind of stuff is way more gratifying than championships. What you look back and appreciate is the journey and what it took to get there.
What is it like to have a young daughter? (Harper Kenley, turns two in April.)
It is awesome. It makes you want to have a bunch of kids. I just love it. But it is challenging. When I get home, I totally forget about anything I have to do here, which is great because it was never like that. I would get on my computer after dinner and be like, ‘OK, what can I do to get a jumpstart on recruiting?’ Now, it is like, ‘OK, it is bath time or diaper duty.’ It is something all the time. Harper is at an age where she is running into everything and she wants to explore. She is wild. Everything goes in the mouth. When you get home, you’re not going to sit down until 9 o’clock. It’s wild in my house. And I’m usually cleaning a lot. It looks like a hurricane spins through daily. n
