Coaching High School Golf for the Ages

53 years and counting for Dave Swartout

By Tom Lang

It’s often said that golf is a game for life.

Dave Swartout at Jackson Lumen Christi High is showing that coaching golf can be for life, too.

Swartout has been coaching golf at Lumen Christi since taking the head job in 1972. Despite his plans to turn 77 years old this summer, Swartout just doesn’t seem to know when to turn in his whistle – err – his yardage book.

He’s been at it so long that he’s coached children and grandchildren of former players. Swartout explained how at one tryout, a young player said that his grandfather asked him to say ‘hello.’

“That made me think, hmmm, maybe I’m getting too old for this,” Swartout said with a chuckle – and that tryout was more than 10 years ago. “But it’s always fun to see the families return.”

As the 2025 high school season gets going this spring, Lumen Christi is pre-season ranked No. 1 in Div. 3 and is eyeing what could be yet another state championship – and they’ve got plenty. The boys’ program, runners up last season to Traverse City St. Francis, has 15 state titles. The first boys’ championship came in the fall of 1978, six years after Swartout took over – and why he did it is another unique story.

His passion and life dream was to coach high school hoops, then college basketball. After one season of basketball coaching at Lumen Christi, he was diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer. He and his doctor concluded that the self-induced stress of that job was to blame. 

“We lost 10 games by four points or less,” he said. “Evidently I was taking that too much to heart.”

Simultaneously, the boys golf team coach announced he was leaving and the AD said that job was available and might be less stressful if he still wanted to coach. “I said I don’t know anything about golf and the AD said, ‘well, neither did he.’ I planned on doing that for a couple years and then find another basketball job somewhere else. That was 53 years ago.”

Swartout said he created the girls’ golf program at Lumen Christi in 1980, before head coaches like Ann Best, Beth Conway and Chuck Kloack took over and earned titles. Swartout has since led two of the girls’ six state championships, in 2004 and the most recent in 2022.

Swartout did briefly step away from full leadership of the boys’ golf team a couple times (but stayed around as an assistant) due to a combination role of still teaching English in the classroom and being assistant principal, but he’d soon be pulled back into the head role.

In 2009, the boys’ head coach quit one week before the season began to move out of state.

“So, the athletic director asked if I would take over the team until they found somebody else,” Swartout said. “Evidently, they are still looking.”

Swartout is a member of the Michigan Interscholastic Golf Coaches Hall of Fame and is often a mentor to many coaches, including those in the Jackson area like Ray Hill at East Jackson.

"Dave is probably the most-respected high school coach in the state,” Hill said. “He has been influential in the state coaches association, and people at the MHSAA listen when Dave speaks. He is as knowledgeable as anyone when it comes to high school golf in Michigan.

"What impresses me most about Dave is the relationship with his players,” Hill added. “After an event, his players find him in the clubhouse, pull up chairs next to him, and are eager to share details of their rounds. They'll sit with him and eat their post-round hot dog and chips rather than with their parents or playing partners. The kids really do appreciate him and enjoy being around him.”

Swartout said those talks after the round is where most teaching takes place. He believes course management is an essential way to improve a golfer’s score.

“To take someone who comes in at 14-15 years old, who has either never swung a club before or who has done it very little, and see them get to the point senior year…to shoot in the 70s, is a really good feeling as a teacher,” Swartout said. “Not much different for a kid who never wrote an essay before or had a very hard time (in class) but a year later they are learning in leaps and bounds. That’s the enjoyment I get out of it. I don’t mind the state championships, but it’s the other that’s more important.”

One example is when Swartout talks to kids about playing a par five, he will ask… “Is there a rule that says you have to hit a driver off the tee? Or better yet with them, do you have to hit a three-wood for your second shot; do you always have to get there (in two)? Those are the things we spend a lot more time working on.”

Hill added: "Dave knows golf, but he also knows kids. He was a longtime teacher, and he knows what buttons to push. He knows when a kid needs a hug or a figurative kick in the backside, and kids respond. He's coached many of their parents, and they know him and trust him to bring out the best in their children."

One of those former players (and a parent) was Steve Maddalena, now a member of the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame for his stellar amateur career. He played for Swartout and graduated the year prior to Lumen Christi’s first two state titles in the 70s, but his younger brother Gary was a leader on those teams. Steve’s son, Connor, now age 29, played at Lumen Christi and was on a state title team.

“Dave always knew how to get the best out of the guys that he had,” Steve Maddalena said. “He’s the kind of coach that never made things worse, which is the kind of coach you want. If a player was struggling, he could always figure out a way to get him to play a little better, but if they were already doing well, he didn’t come in and say ‘I think you can do better and here’s how I think you can.’

“I had that happen to me in college. There are coaches who think they can make you better and they do stuff to screw you up, and Dave was not like that. He never did stuff like that, and I think it’s one of his strengths.”

Swartout keeps coming back, recognizing that working with kids is the motivation.

“The kids. That’s the reason I stayed in the classroom for 37 years. I love teaching. And this is still a way to impact the kids.”

New Challenge for High School Teams:

According to Hill, high school golf teams are working this spring to acquire AED's and develop Emergency Action Plans, as schools look to comply with a new state law. The law requires high schools to have emergency plans for all athletic events, including those that take place off campus – like golf courses. Thus, athletic directors and coaches are taking inventory of which golf courses have AED's, or whether coaches will have to carry a device to courses and throw in the back of their golf cart.

At golf courses, generally there are no medically-trained officials on hand.  This is putting a little more responsibility on coaches who will be first responders for addressing emergencies. The Michigan Interscholastic Golf Coaches Association has worked with the MHSAA and iWanamaker (the scoring app used in Michigan) to develop an emergency plan and post it inside the scoring app so players know how to respond in the event of an emergency on the course, involving a spectator, competitor, or coach.

“Anything that we can do to be better prepared to potentially save a person's life is well worth the effort,” said MIGCA president Debbie Williams-Hoak. “I am grateful to our legislators and the MHSAA for implementing these Emergency Action Plans.”