By Hannah Bartlebaugh, Staff Writer
On Oct. 20, 2025, Wheaton College athletics director Mike Schauer announced that Jonny Tink and Kelly Vazquez would be the new head coaches of the men’s and women’s golf teams, respectively. Paul Craig previously served as the head coach of both programs, beginning with the men’s team in 2018 and adding the women’s team a year later.
Craig announced his decision to step down as head coach in October, effective immediately. Schauer said he and Craig had been having conversations about Craig’s need to step away, as he was balancing many responsibilities outside of the position. Craig also spoke with Tink beforehand, and all agreed that it was best for him to take on the role of interim head coach, as he had been an assistant coach since 2018.
Schauer emphasized that the decision was not a reflection on the former head golf coach.
“Paul’s been our coach for a long time, and we’d be remiss not to say thank you for his time and commitment to men’s and women’s golf,” Schauer said.
Schauer said having the head coaching position split makes sense logistically. He is excited to see how this change will help the teams going forward.
“That’s probably the thing I’m most looking forward to, is that each of them will have a clearly identified head coach that is theirs,” he said. “There’s a hope that they both get the attention that a varsity sport deserves.”
In addition to her work with the women’s golf team, Vazquez has been an assistant professor of engineering at Wheaton since 2023. She first became involved with the women’s golf team as an assistant coach last fall, was then promoted to head coach and has already started working with the team and planning for recruiting. She said she hopes to recruit student-athletes who are both academically and athletically driven.
“If you’re succeeding in the classroom, then you’re more likely to succeed on the course,” she said.
Vazquez wants her team to focus on being their personal best at all times, but in more ways than simply scoring. “For every tournament, we go for a personal best,” she said. “And that could be a best in terms of how many putts you shoot. It could be a best in terms of getting out of the sand bunker in one shot.”
While the prospect of teaching faith and science as harmonious was instrumental in her decision to accept a job at Wheaton, she said if it were not for golf, she would not have the career that she has today.
She took up the sport after starting at a new high school. Vazquez said her dad wanted her to try a new sport to make new friends. While none of the teams interested her at first, her father found some women’s golf clubs on eBay and convinced her to try it for one week.
She did — and loved it.
“I would stay late after practice,” she said. Vazquez even started working at a golf course so she could play for free on the weekends and keep working on her game. Eventually, golf would play a significant role in getting Vazquez to college.
“I never entertained the idea of even being able to go to school, because I grew up in a very low socioeconomic status, and college was not in the cards for me,” she said.
During her senior year of high school, she was recruited to play college golf. However, that school was quite far from home. She ended up at North Central College, where she received a full-ride scholarship for academics. She said playing college golf was the best four years of her life, and her best memories come from doing life alongside her teammates.
“The golf team was everything for me in undergrad,” she said.
Vazquez planned to be a high school physics teacher after graduating from college, but that changed when her major advisor recommended that she pursue graduate school instead. She said the process of learning how to be a teacher at the college level was a journey, especially as her “whole entire identity was being a high school teacher.”
After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado, Vazquez decided that she wanted to work at a primarily undergraduate institution. She applied to many positions, but Wheaton stood out because of its faith-centered learning and invested students.
“That was my first time ever encountering faith and science could be with Scripture, and there was nothing wrong with that,” she said. “In fact, it was applauded.”
Vazquez helped start the college’s engineering department in 2023. She has continued to play golf after college and participates in a faculty and staff golf league every summer.
Tink began playing golf as a child at his hometown country club in Iowa. He played in junior golf tournaments through high school, then came to Wheaton and played for the Wheaton golf team. He chose to attend Wheaton because multiple of his family members had attended.
“When I was in high school, that’s the only place I wanted to go,” he said.
Tink said that being on the golf team at Wheaton was a highlight of his college experience, including the friendships and the spring break missions trips that he took. After graduation, he began playing on the professional circuit and on mini tours. He and his family spent the winters in Wheaton and the summers in Arizona, where he would play golf.
“It’s not as glamorous as it sounds ’cause it’s very low level,” he said. “But it was a very enjoyable but difficult season of life.”
After playing golf for a couple of years, Tink decided to pursue other career options. He ended up working in the mortgage industry in the Wheaton area and helping out with the men’s golf team.
Since taking on the role of interim head coach, Tink said the adjustment has not been too hard so far, although it is still the offseason.
“There’s just a learning curve that takes more time than it would if this were year 10,” he said. “So we’re working through that right now.”
Tink hopes to pass along his experience and knowledge in a way that can be beneficial to the team, though he also has a long-term goal of leading the team to a conference championship.
