Joanne Berglund was named Rice's inaugural Head Women's Golf Coach on June 20, 2024.

Berglund brings over 25 years of head coaching experience to South Main in her previous stops at Montana and North Florida. Her teams have made five trips to the NCAA Regionals, and have finished in the top five of the conference tournament 20 times, including nine top two finishes.

A four-time conference Coach of the Year, her teams earned 17 team titles in her career, while finishing runner-up 22 times. She also coached 10 golfers to individual titles, and 40 all-conference honorees, including 21 first team members.

Berglund is no stranger to starting a program from scratch, as she has served as North Florida’s only head coach since the program was instituted in 2011. During that time, the Ospreys became one of the top programs in the Atlantic Sun, leading them to three A-Sun Championships and six top two finishes in the last 10 years. Her teams won 14 team titles while finishing runner-up nine times. She also coached seven individual medalists.

This past season at North Florida, she led the team to five, top five finishes, including a third-place finish at the Atlantic Sun Championship. Her tutelage helped Christin Eisenbeiss earn an at-large berth to the NCAA Bermuda Run Regional, where she tied for 21^st-place. Eisenbeiss earned her second straight A-Sun Golfer of the Year Award and One Kashima was named the A-Sun Freshman of the Year.

In 2022-23, Eisenbeiss earned the program’s first ever Individual At-Large bid to the NCAA Regionals, finishing in 36^th-place.

North Florida earned back-to-back appearances to the NCAA Regionals in 2020-21 and 2021-22. Berglund was also named the A-Sun Coach of the Year both years. In 2021-22, it won two team titles, including the Atlantic Sun Championship, before taking eighth-place at Regionals, its best-ever finish. The previous year, it earned its first-ever at-large berth while also having its best ranking in school history at 44^th. Eisenbeiss tied for fourth at Regionals, becoming UNF’s first qualifier to the NCAA Championship.

In 2018-19, Berglund led the Ospreys to three team titles, while being named the A-Sun Coach of the Year for the first time.

She led UNF to a top two finish at the A-Sun Championships for four consecutive years, beginning in 2014-15, where it took second-place. It then won the title in 2015-16, just its fourth season as a program, earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals for the first time. The Ospreys went back-to-back the following year.

Prior to taking over North Florida, Berglund spent 16 years at Montana, the final 15 as its Head Coach. During her tenure, the Grizzlies posted 11 top-five finishes at the Big Sky Conference championship, including the last eight. She led Montana to its first-ever league title in 2006, when she was recognized as the Big Sky Coach of the Year, and had runner-up finishes in both 2002 and 2005.

Berglund coached the Big Sky Player of the Year in 2002 while also guiding a pair of golfers to Big Sky Championship medalist showings. In all, she produced 17 All-Big Sky Conference golfers.

Academically, Berglund’s teams captured the annual UM Director of Athletics’ Award four times as the program with the department’s highest cumulative GPA. She had 52 student-athletes on the Academic All-Big Sky Conference team.

Berglund was a four-year letterwinner at Jacksonville University from 1990-93. A three-year captain, she won three individual titles and was runner-up at the 1993 Sun Belt Conference Championship. She also finished fourth in 1992. A four-year member of the university’s President’s List, Berglund graduated magna cum laude in 1993.

Berglund also had a distinguished amateur career, winning the Montana Women’s Amateur in 2001 and 2009 while finishing runner-up in 2002 and 2003. Her amateur performance led to her being inducted into the Montana State Women’s Amateur Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Jacksonville University Hall of Fame in 2011.

Name	Title	Twitter	Phone	Email Address
Joanne Berglund	Head Coach			jb272@rice.edu
Paola Cortes-Ortiz	Assistant Coach			pc86@rice.edu

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