By Elle Laur
Daycare isn’t always an option for California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) women’s golf Head Coach Kathryn (Kat) Hosch. Luckily, her chosen family is more accepting of her three-year-old daughter than she could’ve ever imagined.
She always considered her players as her “children,” so a new dynamic was inevitable.
“I put everything into the golf team,” Hosch says. “The first thing I thought of when I found out I was pregnant was how am I going to balance this all.”
Brooklyn Hosch arrived August 15, 2021, just in time to greet the team for the fall season and welcome the transfer players to the Fullerton campus. Linley Ooi, current assistant coach, and Elina Saksa were a “blessing” and the perfect addition to the group to keep the team afloat in a time of transition.
“Those two girls on my team were so monumental and were the perfect people I needed during that time because they were natural leaders.”
With no maternity leave, Hosch attended practices but leaned on her assistant coach to travel with the team to tournaments.
“Having Brooklyn almost benefited the team because it made them more independent, and I had to handhold less which made the team stronger.”
Being a collegiate coach isn’t only about teaching swing mechanics, course management and making sure the players show up to classes. As she returned to tournaments, Hosch made it her mission to show her eight players that being a mom shouldn’t stop them from achieving their goals.
Actions are greater than words, according to Hosch, even if it’s taking her breast milk through TSA, she knows her players are learning what being a mom is all about.
Hosch led her team to a third-place finish at the 2024 Big West Championship last school year. One of her golfers, junior Davina Xanh, was named Big West Golfer of the Year. The Titans started the fall season with a win at the Pat Lesser-Harbottle Invitational shooting 12-under-par.
Though Brooklyn finds her way to team practices, Hosch makes sure the team keeps their focus on the Big West Championship.
Hosch grew up around golf in Riverside County. She started at the age of four, playing alongside her brother, dad and uncle, who was a teaching professional.
Mount San Jacinto College men’s golf team, not having a women’s team at the time, added both Hosch siblings to the roster, but nobody thought twice about it. Kat competed for one year until the school launched a women’s program that allowed her to advance individually.
On the men's team, Hosch was playing 7,100 yards and was familiar with hitting woods and long irons into the greens and the protection of her brother whenever competitors passed sly comments about her being “the girl” on the team to which he’d reply, “Oh! You mean my sister?”
She felt safe around her teammates. They were all there to do one thing - play golf - and that’s what they did.
Hosch then transferred to CSUF, where she finished her playing career under SoCal Golf Hall of Famer Pearl Sinn-Bonanni, then began coaching as an assistant. She has been a part of the Titan family ever since.
Being on a women’s team was new to her but she never lost sight of her goal: to win and have fun while doing so – a lesson she continues to teach her players, Brooklyn and will surely instill in her second child who is expected this November.
“You don’t have to sacrifice your goals and your career just because you become a mom,” Hosch says. “You can still achieve so much. You can figure it out and get the job done.”
