'Everybody is excited': Chadwell, A&M women's golf ready for 2021-22

Key notes from Gerrod Chadwell interview

• The move has been crazy. We will officially be moved on Thursday when the truck finally shows up. With recruiting, you live out of a suitcase anyway. My wife has played five consecutive weekends of professional golf. I'm definitely ready to officially be moved in.
   
• You go from not being able to recruit for 15 months to it going 100 mph. You're on a plane every week because these kids haven't been seen, and you want to get as many evaluations in as possible. I've been at a different event each week. I've also been trying to hire a new assistant so we can have more people on the road instead of just one.
   
• Being an hour and a half away from College Station, you always kept your eye on what was going on at Texas A&M. They made a change here three years ago before Andrea Gaston's hire, and I had a call about the job then, so I've had my eye on the job for a while. Texas A&M is a place you always keep an eye on, and you hope you can have an opportunity at a place like this. We had to do a good enough job at Houston to warrant this opportunity. In starting that program at Houston, we had to make it a selling point to get an opportunity like this, so that work started seven or eight years ago.
   
• We have a two-and-a-half-year-old, and we wanted to raise a family in an environment conducive to our lifestyle as well as building a competitive golf program. We have all of the resources necessary to be able to win championships here. Texas A&M checked every box for us, and there wasn't a single deterrent other than the sentimental value at Houston.
   
• If my wife has an off week, it's truly an off week, and we do things as a family. Now, they haven't been off weeks recently because we're trying to find a refrigerator or doing things around the house, stuff like that. It takes a special woman to marry a coach. She truly understands what I go through on a daily basis, and I understand everything she needs as a professional athlete. We truly support each other and our careers, and we figure things out.
   
• The school systems in College Station are great. Moving here seemed normal, and we're looking to plug into the community as a family. Everyone is offering to help. I grew up in small-town Oklahoma, and College Station has a similar feel with genuine people who truly want to help.
   
• We have to identify the best talent in the state of Texas. We're trying to get these young women from Texas who can steer us in the right direction. We'll always sprinkle international talent around that. With our class, we have three transfers with three freshmen. We are creating competition and depth at home, which will buy us some time to get incoming freshmen to bolster that. We'll be better than the rankings showed last year. I'm interested to see who will qualify for us when we take that van trip to Dallas.
   
• We had a Zoom call with the team on Wednesday, and everybody is excited. There is a clean slate coming in, so you can sense that energy. I haven’t gotten to know them to the point that I can coach them yet. We'll do a team retreat to Bluejack at the beginning of school, and there won't be much golf involved — it’ll be more about building relationships. The fall season begins pretty quickly, so everything will be thrown into overdrive.
   
• I'm used to starting around the end of August, and school starts on August 30. We leave for a tournament on September 12. We're going to have to be in the gym, getting ready to go. That week, we'll have to do a good job of getting stuff done. We'll figure it out, and it's plenty enough time to get ready to compete in our first event.
   
• I'm ready to start competing. Recruiting is a lifeline of our program, and we can recruit 365 days out of the year. The way our sport is set up, you have to go just to go. I'm ready to get on the road, get to know these young women and how we can make them better golfers. Practice is my favorite part of the year, and I'm just ready to coach. I'm ready.