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DALLAS – Cathy Marino had an ulterior motive during a 1995 trip west – to take the SMU women’s golf team to Palos Verdes, Calif., for a practice round at her home course.
Slightly more than three decades later, that moment has reshaped the regular season schedule for women’s college golf.
On Sunday, some of the best programs in NCAA Division I will tee up for the 30th annual Therese Hession Regional Challenge at the Palos Verdes Golf Club. Every squad in the 16-team field is inside the top 100 of the NCAA Division I rankings, with 12 schools among the top 50, including No. 31 SMU.
But the roots of this storied event go back long before any of the current players were even born.
Marino, an SMU alum, took over as head coach of the women’s golf program ahead of the 1994 season following her stint as a professional. In an effort to get the program back to national prominence, she worked to develop a rigorous schedule that would challenge her team, including a 1995 trip to California.
Ahead of a tournament at UCLA, she called her father to see if it might be possible to bring the Mustangs to Palos Verdes for a practice round, giving her team a chance to see the course she grew up on.
Coincidentally, Ohio State coach Therese Hession, a member of SMU’s 1979 AIAW national championship team and a longtime friend, was also out west for a tournament. Thanks to some help from local connections, the Mustangs and Buckeyes were allowed to play the course for a practice round together. That provided the spark for what would become one of the biggest regular season events in Division I golf.
“I knew when we played that day, it was going to be great and everyone would love it. So I kind of got the idea in my head, ‘Why don’t we have a tournament?’ Therese and I reached out to Sid Croft, my dad’s friend, who I think was on the board of the golf course there and we just threw out the idea of having a tournament,” Marino said. “We put the tournament together for February with this idea of the regional challenge. The ideal was to have a separate competition between the regions where we would try to get the best teams in the country to come.
“We threw it out to the teams and no one said no.”
Marino and Hession worked together to coordinate the event during its infancy, and Hession continued overseeing the competition after Marino stepped away from college coaching following the 1999 season. Hession retired from Ohio State in 2022 after nearly 30 years of service, including as Director of Golf for the entire institution.The tournament was renamed in her honor shortly thereafter.
SMU’s return to Palos Verdes is something both Hession and Marino describe as a “full circle moment.” The Mustangs have climbed back to the upper echelons of college golf, qualifying for the NCAA Championships as a team in 2023 and 2024, with NCAA Regional appearances each of the last three years.
“I always try to make our alums proud, especially those early classes that achieved so much,” said SMU coach Lauren Mason. “They paved the way, set the standard and put our program on the map. We’re working to build on that legacy and recreate that same level of success and camaraderie in today’s era.”
While seeing SMU in the field is a big moment, it’s not the only point of Mustang pride the group will get to share.
One of the annual traditions connected to the event happens the Saturday ahead of the opening round. Select players from each team partner up with representatives from their respective schools or members of the club for a fundraiser college-amateur event. This year, Hession and Marino, will be alongside an SMU representative, putting two of the program’s most significant figures with the next generation of Mustangs.
It’s the final stage of a loop three decades in the making.
“I’m thrilled that they’re going to be there and I’m going to get to see them play a little bit and support them,” Hession said. “One of my dreams when starting this tournament was to give the ladies a premier opportunity to play at a great venue with great competition. I think that’s what they’re going to see.”