This fall, Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk tees up something entirely new: Varsity men’s and women’s golf, with Linville Ridge Golf Club stepping in as the Bobcats’ home course. With golf now added, the athletic department counts 33 varsity and club sports programs in all, and more than 400 students now compete as Bobcat athletes. The college’s president called Linville Ridge’s support of the new program a generous and welcome partnership, one he expects will help the Bobcats build a competitive team from the start.

To lead the new program, the college found a coach who’s done this exact job before. Jamie McQuaker found success building golf from scratch at Southern Union State Community College in Alabama, taking both the men’s and women’s teams to their first-ever national tournament appearance in 2021–22.

For McQuaker, the appeal of doing it all again came down to a few things. “The school, it’s a beautiful campus. The town, it’s a beautiful, beautiful area, a small town, great community,” he said, “and then, of course, the golf course, Linville Ridge definitely had a huge part in that.” He also pointed to the infrastructure already in place across Lees-McRae’s Division II athletic department, which competes in Conference Carolinas, as a real head start compared to his first build.

Building a second program from scratch has also given McQuaker a chance to adjust his approach. He said the biggest shift is putting more emphasis on the player experience itself, making sure his athletes are enjoying the game. “Golf’s a grind, as you probably know, with tournaments and qualifying,” he said. “I think this time around, when we’re not in tournament and qualifying mode, I’m going to make practices as fun and as engaging as possible” — scrambles, best-ball formats, and other team activities mixed in alongside the standard reps. The reasoning is straightforward, he said: Happier players perform better. He’s also leaning on that same philosophy in recruiting, looking for personalities that will mesh well together as a team, not just strong scorecards.

Lees-McRae’s new teams will play out of Linville Ridge Golf Club, an original George Cobb design that Bobby Weed renovated in 2007, a redesign that earned Golf Inc. magazine’s Renovation of the Year award and has landed the course among Golfweek’s favorites. It sits 4,949 feet above sea level, which the club calls the highest elevation of any golf course east of the Mississippi River, and in 2025 it opened a new Learning Facility with TrackMan-equipped indoor bays and a PuttView putting studio — the kind of training environment the Bobcats now have access to as they build a program from scratch.

McQuaker, who grew up playing in Scotland and competed internationally before playing college golf in the U.S., doesn’t put the course in the “among the highest” camp so much as a class of its own. “I’ve played some phenomenal golf courses,” he said, “but Linville Ridge to me is just a world-class golf course.” He credits the staff as much as the layout — golf carts waiting for recruits with their names already on them, a member meet-and-greet planned for mid-August. “They seem really excited to have us,” he said. “I think I read off that, and then the players kind of get that same belief and attitude.”

As for the elevation itself, McQuaker isn’t expecting much of an adjustment. “Golf’s a worldwide game,” he said. “If you’re going to play golf all over the world in different conditions at a high level, it’s something you need to be used to adjusting to.” He noted that modern tools have flattened some of that anyway, with launch monitors and simulators built to normalize yardage regardless of altitude.

The Bobcats’ first season will stay close to home by design: Five events apiece for the men and women, running from early September through late October, with stops that include a King University tournament in Tennessee, an event in Bluefield, Virginia, and one hosted by Spartanburg Methodist in South Carolina. McQuaker said the modest travel radius is intentional for a roster built around eight incoming freshmen. Golf is a game of confidence, he added, and he doesn’t want to throw a young roster in over its head right out of the gate. He expects the schedule to expand as the program matures.

That first recruiting class already covers real ground — players arriving from Texas, New Jersey, Florida, and both Carolinas on the men’s side, and from Florida and Michigan on the women’s, with recruits from Malaysia and Minnesota already lined up for year two. McQuaker is already looking further ahead, too: He has a verbal commitment for next year’s class from a player at Avery County High School, the public school serving Banner Elk itself.

Asked what’s struck him most about Western North Carolina since arriving, McQuaker didn’t hesitate. “It’s kind of hard to be frustrated [...] when you wake up in the mountains,” he said, adding that after three decades living farther south, the region’s real seasons and cooler summers were a selling point on their own.

McQuaker traces part of his own approach to the game back to his grandfather, who worked as a greenskeeper in Scotland. “I’m huge on etiquette, and respecting the course,” he said, pointing to fixed ball marks and raked bunkers as non-negotiables for his players. That same childhood shaped his game in other ways, too: Growing up, he’d sometimes play a nine-hole course alone, looping it again and again until he’d played 54 holes in a single day, made possible by Scottish summer daylight that lingers until nearly 11 at night. He credits that upbringing with making him more of a feel player — someone who developed his game largely on his own, rather than through formal lessons.

Follow the Bobcats’ inaugural season at lmcbobcats.com/sports/mens-golf and lmcbobcats.com/sports/womens-golf as rosters take shape.

Lees-McRae isn’t the only program worth watching. It’s also not the only one entering the season with new leadership — three of the five programs below are led by first- or second-year coaches, or are still searching for one. Here’s the rest of the field.

Appalachian State University — An NCAA Division I program in the Sun Belt Conference, based in Boone, fielding both men’s and women’s golf. The men’s team, under second-year coach John Michael Cole, saw the Mountaineers finish 11th out of 14 teams at last spring’s Sun Belt Championship. The women’s team is led by Chan Metts, the 2024 Big South Women’s Golf Coach of the Year at his previous stop, Charleston Southern. Both squads play out of Boone Golf Club, an Ellis Maples design from 1959, pairing naturally with Lees-McRae as the High Country’s other headline programs.

Western Carolina University — A Division I program in the Southern Conference, based in Cullowhee, fielding both men’s and women’s golf. The men’s team, under longtime coach Tim Eckberg, posted eight top-five finishes during the 2025-26 regular season, one of the best stretches in program history, and the Catamounts’ top scorer was named the SoCon’s Golfer of the Year. The women’s team, under head coach Anne Marie Covar, finished eighth at its own SoCon Championship this spring. The men’s home tournament, the JT Poston Invitational, returns to Waynesville Inn & Golf Club each September, its trophy a purple mailbox nodding to alum JT Poston’s PGA Tour nickname, “The Postman.”

The University of North Carolina at Asheville — A Division I program in the Big South, fielding women’s golf only. The Bulldogs head into the fall in transition: Longtime head coach Ross Cash stepped down July 31, capping a run that included the program’s first Big South individual title and its first NCAA Regional appearance, both earned this spring. A national search for his replacement is underway. The team plays out of The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, moving into a new on-campus practice facility in December 2025 after Hurricane Helene destroyed its predecessor.

Mars Hill University — A Division II program in the South Atlantic Conference, fielding both men’s and women’s golf under a single coach. New head coach Bryan Greenway took over both the men’s and women’s programs in November 2025, arriving from Southwest Virginia Community College, where his teams won back-to-back region titles. The Lions play out of Wolf Laurel Country Club, billed as one of the highest golf courses east of the Mississippi at nearly 4,800 feet.

Montreat College — An NAIA program in the Appalachian Athletic Conference, fielding both men’s and women’s golf under head coach John Sullivan. The men’s team posted back-to-back top-five finishes this spring, including a tie for fourth at the Stitch Golf Sandhills Flyers Intercollegiate. The women’s team closed its season with a seventh-place finish at the AAC Direct Qualifier, its best result there since 2021. The Cavaliers play their home matches at Black Mountain Golf Course, the same historic course featured in our July 22 issue.

Thanks to Jamie McQuaker for agreeing to be interviewed for this article.