By Fred Altvater
For University of Toledo Women’s Head Golf Coach, Jenny Coluccio, building a top-ranked golf program is a top priority, but with two young sons and a husband, she also has a team at home that demands her time and effort. For any young mother balancing work and family is no easy task, but Coluccio welcomes the challenge and is eager to build a winning golf program at Toledo.
One of her first acts as Head Coach has been to entice several top women’s golf programs to come to Toledo for the Glass City Invitational. She was able to sweeten the offer to those schools with the opportunity to play the host course of the 2021 Solheim Cup, the newly renovated Inverness Club.
Coluccio is looking to use this type of big-time event to build on past success at Toledo and take the women’s golf program to the next level. 
That means finding a way to beat perennial Mid-American Conference (MAC) champion, Kent State. In the 21-year history of women’s golf in the MAC, no other school has defeated the Golden Flashes in the conference championship.
Coluccio has the training and the background to get the job done. As a collegiate golfer, she was a three-time All-Great Lakes Valley Conference honoree, collecting 12 top-15 finishes in her collegiate career.
She was both the men’s and women’s head golf coach at the University of Sioux Falls for three years and her teams showed improvement every year.
Before coming to Toledo, Coluccio spent five years as an assistant coach for the University of Illinois. During her time there, the Illini earned two NCAA Regional appearances and garnered eight All-Big Ten selections. The Illini vaulted nearly 100 spots in the national rankings by the end of 2018.
Coluccio is happy to have Grace Park, who was a standout golfer at Illinois as an assistant coach. Park is working part-time for the women’s golf team and has an Assistant Golf Professional for Toledo Country Club.
Park is a former University of Illinois standout. She earned All-Big Ten First Team honors as a senior and set school records for best stoke average in a single season and career, while at Illinois.
She was a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree and also won the individual title at the Lady Buckeye Invitational in her senior year. She finished tied for eighth at the 2018 Big Ten Tournament.
We asked Coach Coluccio what it will take to unseat Kent State as the dominant women’s golf program in the MAC?
-Upgrade winter training facilities
The university currently has a three-bay indoor hitting area and uses Trackman to help hone swings. It does, however, need to be updated, with additional netting and dividers.
–Constantly recruit the best talent and right fit from not only Ohio and Michigan, but internationally, as well.
Ohio is a hot bed of talented young women athletes. Helping a few of those young ladies understand the positives of attending UT, rather than another golf program, is a top priority. However, Coluccio will also continue to recruit the best international players to create a ‘Melting Pot’ of women golfers at Toledo.
-Work with all local golf programs, including The First Tee and Toledo Junior Golf Association, to develop talented women golfers.
The Toledo Junior Golf Association has been providing junior golfers an opportunity to improve their games and test their skills against the best golfers from the area since 1973. Every year many of these young women take their games to other colleges. Coluccio hopes to keep them closer to home.
Also, the new world-class training facility that The First Tee of Lake Erie is planning to build adjacent to Inverness will provide additional opportunities for young women to improve their games and compete locally.
Right now, recruiting is job one. She will begin this season with three talented seniors, Donchanok Toburint, Thunpijja Sukkasem and Saranlak Tumfong, all from Thailand. With no juniors or sophomores on the 2019-2020 team, she will be counting on four freshman, Caroline Kane from Pickerington, Ameilia Lee, from Hilliard, local product, Kathryn Roth, from Waterville and Claudia Sampson from Port Clinton, to quickly adjust to collegiate play and contribute.
In addition to working to build a successful golf program, Coluccio has two children at home, plus her husband Brett, the Head Golf Professional at Toledo Country Club, to fill up her off time away from golf.
Building a successful collegiate golf program and juggling a growing family are both difficult jobs, but we think Jenny will do just fine with both.
