In the first episode of Let’s Par-Tee, I chat with collegiate golfer Cassidy Gavaghan. As a lifelong golfer now playing at Monmouth University, Cassidy talks about the lessons she’s learned from sports and the role models she’s had along the way. Host Cameron Fisher reports from Horsham, PA.
TRANSCRIPTION:
(Music “All Hot Lights” Open (:07))
CAMERON FISHER: Hi everyone! Thanks for tuning in for my first episode, I’m Cameron Fisher and this is Let’s Par-Tee. To get the ball rolling, today we will be talking to one of my best friends and someone I met through playing golf, Cassidy Gavaghan. Cass is a Division One golfer at Monmouth University in New Jersey and she recently spoke at an event her university put on about women in sports. She knows about the trials and tribulations about being a student athlete, and she shares some of what she values most about her athletic career and where she hopes to go beyond sports. My vision for this podcast is to talk to women in sports who can reflect and share on their experiences and lessons learned, and talking with Cassidy is a great place to start, so let’s jump right in.
(Music Close (:50))
CAMERON FISHER: So today I wanted to start my podcast with bringing someone who knows a little bit about the, not a little bit, but a lot of bit, about the golf world. Someone who grew up caddying with me someone who knows a lot about women in sports and what it takes to be on a team and the leadership skills that she has grown from it. So today I have Cassidy Gavaghan, Division One golfer at Monmouth University who plays on the women’s team. I just wanted to get her perspective about the role that women in sports have in society and the way she looks at being on a golf team with her teammates and the impact of her coaches. So thanks for being with us today Cass.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN; Thanks so much for having me, Cameron. Yeah, really grateful to be here and to express my experiences through this podcast.
CAMERON FISHER:Yeah. So why don’t we get started by having you tell us a little bit about yourself, like what is your background?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: So I’m Cass, Cass Gavaghan. I am currently at Monmouth University playing golf. I’m a junior there. I grew up playing golf because both my mother and my grandmother were very good players and they implemented me into the game pretty quickly. And it’s been really something that we have a shared bond over and that we can always kind of talk about and it’s, it’s been such a great thing to have within my family because it’s, it’s so awesome getting out there with my grandmother who’s currently 82 and seeing how she’s still such a good player and like how this really is such a lifelong sport.
CAMERON FISHER: That’s awesome. So your grandmother and your mom got you into golf?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yes, definitely. They were both really good golfers and they still are today, my mom is still a single digit handicap, which means you’re a pretty good golfer. And she’s 50 years old. So she’s still really getting after it and she plays team matches and tournaments all the time. So it’s really cool to see and watch her play as well.
CAMERON FISHER: It’s awesome to have those role models and something that you’re so like, in tune with to that they can really relate to that about.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: They definitely inspire me. I know it’s cliche, but not only in golf but outside of it as well.
CAMERON FISHER: So what kind of like takeaways have you learned from your, your grandmother and your mom about golf that have translated to your real life aspects?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Well, golf, it has definitely taught me that you can have a bad shot, a bad hole, a bad round, you have to kind of take the lumps that it gives you and apply them to future situations that you are faced with later in life and kind of take the worst feeling that you were feeling during that round and kind of have that power behind you to look at situations differently. My mom and grandmother I’ve always just, they’ve never been mad at me for shooting a bad round. They’ve always just kind of been there to pick me back up and tell me it’s not the end of the world because a golf is just a small part of life. It’s not something that you can really let ruin a day life a year. You kind of just have to work on what you missed during that round and get back and kind of make sure it doesn’t happen again.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, so you’re talking a lot about like life lessons you’ve learned through sport, like, what kind of impact has like sport taught you on the way you go about your life, and the things that you do that takes away from practicing or from the golf course?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Um, so well playing a sport in college, college golf has really taught me how to be a great time manager. I’m really grateful to have the skills acquired, as well as play a sport in college. It’s so awesome getting to travel and be with my teammates all the time. It’s been a really awesome thing to kind of share that bond over golf, and travel and see all these different courses. And when we do well, it’s so exciting. But I really am so thankful for that time aspect. I really know how to delegate my time now. And it’s definitely gonna help me later in life because we just we have to dedicate so much time every day to our sport. That we have we have to make so much of our other time for schoolwork, like hanging out friends. Because you should always try to fit that in. And among many other things like meeting with teachers, etc. But it I would say, all in all I’m most thankful right now for the time manager, time management piece of it that’s been helping.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, that’s big. I’m a college student too. So I know I understand. Like, I don’t even play sports and I couldn’t imagine still Yeah, I having to balance like lift sessions and waking up early and getting to the course on time and getting to practice.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: It’s definitely worth it though.
CAMERON FISHER: So I know at your school, Monmouth, they recently had a Women in Sports Conference where they invited alumni and parents and teachers to the event and you actually spoke at that.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yes I did.
CAMERON FISHER: Would you talk a little bit about what you talked about?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yeah, so we have a National Women’s Sports Day event at Monmouth that is really great. It’s actually a three part series to it. So we have that luncheon where there’s a woman candidate picked, picked from every single team, so there was someone from basketball, soccer, my team, etc., they’re all chosen to speak at this event. And it’s basically not only to commemorate women in sports at Monmouth, but all around we actually had a panel at the end of the event that had a former WNBA player, a field hockey alumni from our school who is on our Board of Trustees now among a few other people who were all asked questions about women in sports, what it means to them, how it has changed over time. So it was really cool to get that insight from someone older than us, after they heard us speak. And it was, my parents and my family and my coach really enjoyed it. It was it was awesome to get up there and thank everyone who was there and kind of talk about how the differences within sports and gender have really changed over time. And the second event in that series is we have, we host local middle and elementary school kids before one of our women’s basketball games, and we kind of do a bunch of events with them, they love they love being there and kind of talking to college athletes they definitely look up to, to us
CAMERON FISHER: Is that like young girls in the community?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yeah, exactly. And we had we had like about 100 kids
CAMERON FISHER: That’s awesome
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: And then they get free entry into the women’s basketball game and we sit with them and we watch the game and I was actually brought out at halftime among the other woman candidates and I got a nice bag that’s said International Women’s Sports Day. It was it was a really awesome experience.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, that’s so cool.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: I’m definitely really grateful for it and I can’t believe how far women have come. It’s been awesome to watch.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, that’s really unique that it’s such a small school like Monmouth would take the time out of to just like put together an event like this to show support for the thriving sports community at Monmouth.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Absolutely. Right. Yeah. And the male athletes at the school, they come out they support. So it’s a it’s a really tight knit community, we all support one another.
CAMERON FISHER: Because thinking like decades ago, generations ago, that would not be heard of in the day’s society.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Oh, gosh, no, no. The history of it is just it’s mind boggling with what, I don’t know if you know what Title IX is, but it’s all federal funded, federal funded programs have to be equally, the money has to be equally donated between both men and women.
CAMERON FISHER: And like you’re playing like a small sport too. So it’s not like you’re playing like basketball or lacrosse or soccer, like the bigger teams like the fact that Monmouth was able to put together a women’s golf team is like really special.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yeah, it’s awesome.
CAMERON FISHER: That it’s competitive and they’re able to travel around. So that’s really-
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yeah, and it’s great to see all the other schools that have programs to like, we just-
CAMERON FISHER: Like how far they’ve come.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yeah, my team actually just went to an event in Kiawah and they were there were 55 women’s teams there.
CAMERON FISHER: No way!
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: So it’s been it’s so cool how all these schools have programs and they continue to build programs because not not every college has a women’s golf program. So it’s definitely in the works.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, yeah. It’s cool to see how far it’s come especially from the time that your mom was playing college golf.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Right
CAMERON FISHER: Like when your grandmother was around
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: So different. Yeah, I’ve loved talking about it with them. It’s fun to compare their experiences with mine because they just, they just always tell me how lucky I am to be doing what I’m doing, and I know that, to have a coach like mine and teammates and get like I said, getting to travel, I can never stress enough how impactful it has been for me like getting to see courses I’ve never seen before and kind of just being out there and doing what I love.
CAMERON FISHER: I think the biggest thing is that like a lot of people, they want to leave what they were a part of better than what they found it. So like a lot of like the women at the Board of Trustees who were at Monmouth at that day, probably went through a lot of hardships when they were playing collegiate sports and probably wanted to leave a better experience for the next generations to come. That’s what I think we see a lot of across the board.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Absolutely.
CAMERON FISHER: Women in pretty much anything like media, culture, anything like that, which is-
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yes.
CAMERON FISHER: Really great to see.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yeah, they just kept saying how thankful they were to be there and how they kept sharing all the advice they had to give us with women in sports, and I’m a strong supporter of women in every field. So yes, it was really cool to get that kind of sports perspective since I’m immersed in that right now at this point in my life.
CAMERON FISHER: Very cool. So you’ve talked a little bit about your coach, what kind of impact has she had on you guys as a team and what kind of leader has she been?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: She’s, she’s been so awesome. She’s behind us with every move we make. She tells us how we can get better not only at golf but in life. She is absolutely amazing. I could not ask for a better coach. She is very impactful within my whole team. We constantly talk about, like, different things going on in our lives. We laugh, we, we cry, we do everything together. It’s she almost feels like she’s a part of our team, but we definitely all look up to her.
CAMERON FISHER: That’s really great to have.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yes, I love it.
CAMERON FISHER: Mm hmm. So what kind of lessons will you take away from your time as a collegiate golfer, or as a collegiate athlete and moving forward with?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Outside time management, I would say that sports has really exposed me to so many different types of personalities.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah,
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: And I’ve definitely become more accepting of learning more about people’s backgrounds. There’s so many foreign people actually at my school within athletics, so I’ve learned a lot about a few different cultures and within the sports word community, there are also a lot of people who are of different sexualities. So I have a lot more friends now of different sexualities than I did before college because just in general, not like as a stereotype, but in sports, there are a lot of people that are gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc. And I don’t mind saying that I mean it’s a fact. Um, but it’s, it’s I’m so accepting of anyone I meet and it’s, it’s really cool to see how someone who plays a sport and loves it just as much as you do how they got to that point.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah. And everybody’s backgrounds different and like, yeah, especially, just like collegiate athletes, just they all have different backgrounds and ways they grew up and like activities are a part of that led them to where they are at this point.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s been it’s been really great. I’m very thankful for them right now. I definitely enjoy college golf, but it’s, it’s a lot so I’ll be I’ll be ready to finish up in about a year or two.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, but you’re definitely thankful for the experience.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Absolutely, it’s a it’s something honestly, in my life, I’ll probably talk about, like, to everyone I meet, I mean, I can’t express enough how much these four years will probably mean to me and how much it has taught me being exposed to so many different types of people and kind of having to delegate my time and really have that drive to do do well, because I mean, it’s not like you, it’s like once a week, it’s every day, you know, one day off a week. You got to show up on time, you got to put in all put in all that effort. So yeah, it’s, it’s honestly been something I would never want someone to take away from me.
CAMERON FISHER: That’s awesome. So, I think I want to end all my podcasts or my episodes going forward with asking about like, who your role models are, what do you look for in someone and like how you will strive to achieve that in the future. So who are some of your role models?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: So right off the bat, two of my role models, definitely my mom and my grandmother. They are awesome women who are definitely driven, as more as much, I get a lot of the inspiration for my game from them like they fueled it, they, they always want me to come back. And it’s, it’s it’s so empowering to have two people so close to you that want to see you succeed and do well. A few of my other role models are definitely my coach and my teammates. I can learn something about each of them that I could take away and kind of apply to my own game. I mean, they’re definitely famous people out there that inspire me. I just don’t I don’t know off the top of my head. You know what I mean? It’s so hard to pick a role model. I mean-
CAMERON FISHER: Because there’s so many people out there who are making an impact and yeah, definitely get better like I said, for the next generation.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Yeah, exactly. I mean, with Kobe Bryant’s passing, it’s a we got to see so much of what drove him to do well in basketball. So I definitely have seen a lot of quotes from him that have gotten me out of bed in the morning and gotten me to work out a little more. I mean, it was such a it was such an impact to our whole society and community as a whole that it, it was hard not to like turn around to the TV and see him all over it. It was like for days on end, we were just seeing all this news about him and his family. And he really was someone who was so dedicated to his game and craft. So I definitely like the reason to have that he has like fueled so my inspiration in some of the recent weeks, it was definitely a sad time for our-
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, well, we can learn a lot from what he did and like the short time that he was on earth and just take going forward as people and as people who want to make an impact.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: Absolutely. Thanks so much.
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah. Any closing thoughts for today? Oh, anything about women in sports that we didn’t touch on?
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: No, I just I really can’t wait to see how we continue to progress. Because I know as of right now, it’s definitely not where we want it to be. But there has been so much progress made. So I’m excited for the future and what has to hold. And yeah, thank you
CAMERON FISHER: Yeah, thanks for coming on Cass. It was fun.
CASSIDY GAVAGHAN: I can’t wait to hear the rest of the episodes. I’m excited.
CAMERON FISHER: Definitely, thank you Cass.
(Music Open (14:50))
CAMERON FISHER: So that was the first one, podcast number one is in the books! I had a great time talking with Cass in one of our many conversations, the first conversation of which we actually recorded. So at the end of every episode I think it would be good to talk about my takeaways and what I gained from the conversation with my guest. So my takeaway from this conversation with Cassidy, is that having role models plays a huge factor in your dedication and motivation. Cass really talked about the impact that her mom and grandmother had on her, and I know from personal experience, that they are really great people, so I can only imagine how supportive they have been for Cassidy as a golfer. Alright, so anyway that was my first episode of Let’s Par-Tee, hope you’ll tune in for the next one!
(Music Close (15:45))
SHOW NOTES:
Cassidy Gavaghan – Monmouth University Student & Women’s Golfer (215) 680-2959 s1167407@monmouth.edu