Southampton Senior Ella Coady Is Recipient of Chick Evans Scholarship

Ella Coady has been playing golf for her whole life. In fact, she can’t even remember a time when the sport wasn’t an integral part of almost every day. It started when she was just 3, when, under her father’s guidance, she would hit shots with a small driver and putter from the garage into the yard.

Her commitment to the sport has paid off.

Coady, a senior at Southampton High School, is one of four high school seniors from Long Island chosen last month as recipients of the Chick Evans Scholarship, a full, four-year housing and tuition scholarship for golf caddies. It is the country’s largest privately funded scholarship program.

Coady, 18, has been a standout for the Mariners girls golf team since she joined the squad when she was in seventh grade, the first year Southampton offered a girls golf program. She steadily became one of the best players in the county, winning the Suffolk County Girls Golf Championship as a sophomore, and finishing second as a junior last spring. She has also worked as a caddie at National Golf Links of America in Southampton since she was 14. This will be her fifth summer working at the historic course.

Billy Muller, the caddymaster at National, brought the Chick Evans Scholarship to Coady’s attention, and encouraged her to apply. Coady earned her position at National by mailing a business letter she wrote to the club, when she was 14, asking for a job, and she’s been very happy there.

“I love that course and the members,” she said. “Everyone always says the view on Hole 3 is the best, but I argue it’s the view from the Hole 17 tee box. You get to see the whole Great Peconic Bay, and there’s nothing better than working late and it’s a weekend or a Friday, and people have their sailboats out on the water. It’s gorgeous out there.”

The views aren’t the only thing Coady loves at National.

“It’s such a great community,” she said. “Everyone is so tightly knit there. They were so welcoming to a 14-year-old girl, and that’s incredible. They’ve treated me like gold.

“One of the great things about golf is, yeah, it’s a male dominated sport, but if you step in and know what you’re doing, guys will respect you right away,” she said. “That’s what I love about golf — if you give respect, you get respect.”

The respect she shows members and then earns in return is one reason why Coady was selected as a Chick Evans Scholarship recipient, after going through several rounds of interviews. The Long Island Evans Scholarship is the result of a partnership between the Western Golf Association’s Evans Scholars Foundation and the Long Island Caddie Scholarship Fund. While each recipient has a different story and background related to golf and how they started working as caddies, they must strongly reflect the scholarship’s four selection criteria: a strong caddie record; excellent academics; demonstrated financial need; and outstanding character. The full tuition and housing college scholarship is valued at an estimated $125,000 over four years.

Currently, a record 1,100 caddies are enrolled at 22 universities across the nation as Evans Scholars, and more than 11,800 caddies have graduated as Evans Scholars since the program was founded by famed Chicago amateur golfer Charles “Chick” Evans Jr. When the 2022-2023 selection meeting process is completed this spring, an estimated 325 caddies are expected to be awarded the Evans Scholarship.

Coady will attend Penn State University, where she plans to study biology. She said she plans to try out for the women’s golf team, a highly competitive Division I program, but said that even if she does not make the squad, she will continue to play golf, perhaps on the school’s intramural squad, and whenever she has time to get out on a course. The fact that golf is highly accessible as a lifelong sport is the main reason her father, Jim, introduced it to her at a young age. Ella’s younger sisters — Reily, 12, and Zoe, 11 — are also following in her footsteps, and she said she hopes to see them one day join the golf team and earn summer jobs as caddies.

In addition to the opportunities it has provided for her, golf has also always been a way for Coady and her father to develop a close relationship.

“It’s always been a way for me and my dad to bond,” she said. “We’d get up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays, go get a doughnut at 7-Eleven, and then play golf at the Sag Harbor Golf Course.”

Early morning trips to go play at various public, nine-hole courses not only taught her the game, Coady said, but also gave her an appreciation for the small but important joys in life — seeing the sun rise, or seeing a fox skitter out of the woods while on the course.

She got into the competition aspect of the game after participating in a drive, chip and putt contest when she was in the fourth grade, and by fifth grade she was traveling to compete at junior PGA tour events.

She said she is grateful that Southampton — which, several years ago, only had a boys golf team — added a girls program when she was a seventh-grader. She has tried to be a mentor to younger, less experienced girls who have joined the team, hoping the program remains strong even after she graduates.

It’s a safe bet that success will continue for Coady when she departs for Penn State in the fall. She credited not only her father, for introducing her to the game, but also her mother, Tara Coady, for helping develop her character.

“My mom taught me how to hold myself and compose myself with my manners,” she said. “But golf had me put it into work.”

Both Jim and Tara Coady are proud of their oldest daughter for how far she has come, and being recognized for her hard work and commitment to golf, which led to her earning the scholarship.

“It’s incredible,” Jim Coady said. “The whole goal was to teach her golf because I always knew golf would create opportunities, I just didn’t know how. She just loved the game. I thought, if we can get college money, that would be the icing on the cake, but in the meantime, it just allowed us to spend a lot of time together.

“The best was the members that reached out from National, telling me how incredible she is,” he continued. “That was better than hearing she’s a great golfer.”

Tara Coady pointed out that in taking a job as a caddie at National, Ella became the third generation of her family to embrace caddying. Her maternal grandfather, James Arthur Leach, worked as a caddie in North Carolina, and Jim also caddied at National when he was 19 and 20 years old.

Carrying on that tradition, and seeing such a huge reward come out of it, has been gratifying for the entire family.

“We’re just super proud of her,” Jim Coady said. “When we got the final notice that she got it, it was pretty emotional for all of us. We understand how big of an opportunity this is.”