The Louisiana Sports Writers Association has named Head Coach Tim Baldwin of the Lions golf team Coach of the Year for the eighth time.
Baldwin just finished his 25th season as head coach during his career at Southeastern and has been with the university since 1983. This season, Baldwin coached his intimate team of seven-three freshmen, three sophomores and one senior-to their first Southland Conference title since 2010. Together they posted a 13-stroke victory.
“It’s a nice honor,” said Baldwin, who was given the same honor in 1989, 1992, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2007. “I mostly attribute it to how we turned our season around. We didn’t have a great Fall. [Rhys West] was injured; he didn’t play the first two events, so we were putting in some younger players to get them play. We got started in the Spring, and we had kind of dug a hole with our play thus far, so we knew where we had to get to and how to get there. The guys buckled down and we won three of our last five tournaments.”
Originally from eastern Michigan, Baldwin spent a lot of time on the golf course near his childhood home. This time spent with his father built up his love of golf and before he knew it, he was playing golf at Southeastern on scholarship. Fate stepped in, and it was only two years later that Baldwin was given the chance to interview for the golf team’s head coach position.
“At the time, they had dropped football, around 1985, and they brought in a new athletic director, around 1988, who was trying to bring back football,” Baldwin said. “Well in the process of trying to bring back football they decided to make a fulltime golf coach. I interviewed for the position, and have been here ever since.”
Since golf is an individual sport professionally, coaching in a team setting calls for attending to each player individually. The humble game calls for a balance of calmness and passion. Baldwin coaches his players by showing them how to reach their goals, giving them the right environment to grow and learn as a golfer and individual.  
“You have to be calm, but you also can’t be too calm,” Baldwin said. “You have to have a fire burning. I’ve had players that burn too hot, but I’ve also had players that were so calm that you kind of just had to kick them in the butt to say ‘Come on, get a little angry here. It’s going to burn a little bit.’ So everybody is different. That’s the important thing to realize is that they’re all different and I have to manage them differently because golf is an individual game, but here I’ve got them in a team environment.”
As a coach, Baldwin “stresses team environment over individual” which creates an “interesting challenge, but the main thing is to get some momentum and have some goals,” Baldwin said.
That momentum will be what makes the Lions excel in the upcoming season. Eamon Bradley, named Freshman of the Year by the LSWA, has “evolved into a real nice player,” said Baldwin, and the entire team has “caught fire” and gained more confidence as a result of this past season. Nicholas Inderthal, Lawrence Allan and Bradley will all return as sophomores, and all former sophomores will return as juniors including Charlie Sault “who is getting better all the time.” “Hopefully, we can pick up where we left off and stay competitive,” said Baldwin.