For the new coach, she reached a milestone for the first time with the freshman class she recruited entirely by her. This is the season for Boling Green head coach Erin Fahey.

“I always told the girls that this is the first time I feel like we have nine like-minded student-athletes who want to work hard and get disciplined, but ultimately they just want to be part of something bigger than themselves,” Fahey said.

Something bigger? Check the box for the playoffs. The Falcons never had a playoff appearance in the planning history – as a team or sending individuals – before Bowling Green won a spot in this week’s National Golf Invitational field. For coaches like Fahey, who tried to build the program into new heights, NGI represents an important stage on that growth ladder.

In the recruitment, Fahey is learning what kind of players she wants to attract to Bowling Green players. Many recruits could lower their 70s release rounds, but Fahey highlighted the plans they were going to join.

“I’m trying to promote to them, do you want to be part of a plan that is built or established?”

The former will certainly be more difficult and ups and downs, but at the end of the day, Fahey thinks it makes more sense. The correct student-athletes she builds will agree.

NGI offers a great opportunity to build its own team – like Bowling Green, a 27-year-old alumnus who has completed his third season head coach. It's a window into the playoffs and thus can be an experience in the building blocks - she fits in with information about other important events on her schedule, such as Bowling Green's home invitational and conference champions.

"The game didn't win the 15th hole, didn't win the 30th hole, won the 54th hole," she said. "So, for us, never be too high, never get too low, just embrace the opportunity."

Bowling Green attended the Central American Conference, a league that has been dominated by Kent State every year since its launch in 1999. The league champion also comes with an automatic qualifying location to enter the NCAA area, which is the big carrot of the Mid-Major program.

This spring, Bowling Green aims to be in the top three in the MAC Championship. The Falcons ended up on the second day and the next day, and when they received an NGI invitation, that height reached a new level. Fahey called each player to let her know separately, and the last call was new graduate student Makenna Jones. Fah told Jones that if you did, there was no feeling of sadness.

“She was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’ll get my club back here tomorrow.’ “She asked her parents to take the club home because she didn’t think she needed them. ”

When Jones answered Fahey's call, she kept wandering in the student union.

"She saw the other two girls, she was like, they were smiling so big now," Fahey remembered the phone call. “They are all very excited.”

In addition to Jones, Fahey traveled two freshmen, a sophomore and a junior, at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona. Bowling Green's roster has surfaced throughout the season, but that also means that all nine women on the roster are part of the team's story.

The Falcons ranked in the top 5 in three of the four fall events and won the home invitational in April. Fahey felt the team struggled to find rhythm in the spring, partly because of the cold weather. She said it was a young team that wanted to listen, learn and get better, and that was proven by the scoring trend.

"We're a lot of birdies in the history of a team, but we've also made a lot of more complex mistakes," Fahey said. "(Assistant coach) Noah (Barth) and I tried to say, let's focus on whether we left the position, went into B and saved bogey. They really literally looked at it, and now all of a sudden, they've been bogey all the time."

“I think it’s just trying to figure out how to communicate with them on the golf course from this perspective and some learning classes.”

You might say that Fahey was built to figure it out. She told former Bowling Green head coach Stephanie Young in the 2016-17 season that she wanted to start the career after graduation. At that time, Fahey was a sophomore.

Fah said: "She said, 'Great, we'll get you on board after graduation.'

She coached at Young from 2019 to 2021 and then served as an assistant coach at Colorado State for a season, fueling everything for boss Laura Cilek, including how to embrace the team and community while demanding a high level. Fahey was appointed as head coach in the mid-2021-22 season.

Coaches at alma mater mean something different to Fahey. Her inner investment level is difficult to match outsiders.

“I learned a lot along the way,” Fay said, “but it’s just the alum of the program that continues to motivate me to want to make us better – just keep moving forward because from that perspective, that means more.”