Mary Kate Rohn ‘14/M ’16 Walsh applied the champion golfer’s focus to her entire North Central College experience, reaping the benefits of that effort by blazing new trails for the Cardinals’ women’s golf program.
At the outset of Walsh’s college search, she quickly determined the small-college setting was likely to deliver the well-rounded education she sought.
“I discovered what the time requirements would be to play in Division I and I just knew that was not the life I wanted,” she said. “I really wanted to be able to focus on my academics. My parents recommended North Central and some other small schools, and when I got on campus and met Coach Tye (Thompson), I was pretty much sold.”
Walsh placed 16th in the 2010 CCIW Championship as the Cardinals achieved a program-best second-place finish with a team score of 990, which remains a North Central 54-hole record. The team also set new tournament scoring records for 18 holes (314) and 36 holes (645) and earned the program’s first at-large bid to the NCAA Division III National Championship in Lake Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida, placing 18th.
“I still remember the day we were in Merner Field House waiting to get the news if we got in or not,” Walsh recalled. “We didn’t have an automatic qualifier so it took our play throughout the whole season to earn our way in. It was a validation of all that hard work.
“It was a hard week on a difficult course in extreme temperatures, but the experience was really rewarding for me. It proved that with hard work and set goals in mind, you can achieve anything you want.”
Walsh earned All-CCIW honors with a fifth-place finish in the 2012 CCIW Championship before becoming North Central’s second individual conference champion in 2013, leading the Cardinals to a third second-place showing in four years. Walsh and Carthage College’s Kayla Meyer were tied at the top of the field, six strokes ahead of the competition, heading into the third and final day before play was suspended due to weather. Walsh, who matched her own North Central 36-hole record with her total of 151, was declared the champion after a scorecard playoff.
“It was a magical week for me,” Walsh said of the championship. “My dad (the late Bill Rohn) was really sick, but he was able to be there with my whole family to watch, and the course we played was about 10 minutes from where I grew up.
“(The suspension of play) didn’t put a damper on it for me. I was really playing well and I knew I was going to lock it in.”
Also the Cardinals’ all-time record for the lowest 18-hole score in competition (73), Walsh ranks third in North Central history in scoring average (83.86) and was the program’s first four-time Women’s Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) Scholar Athlete.
“I think being a student-athlete makes you very marketable, because people know the skills and qualities you have to have,” she said. “It gave me the drive and discipline to continue to succeed in my daily life, to work hard for what you want, and that it’s important to have fun.”
