Northwestern Women's Golf Coach Talks Road to First NCAA Championship

The coach led the 'Cats to an improbable victory over No. 1 Stanford on Wednesday.

Northwestern Women's Golf poses with NCAA Championship trophy. | Photo: Northwestern Athletics

Emily Fletcher has been at the helm of Northwestern's Women's Golf program for 17 seasons. In that time, she's represented everything Northwestern stands for as an institution, molding student-athletes and fostering a routinely competitive program.

But the one thing that was previously missing from her resume was a national championship. The Wildcats took care of that on Wednesday when they defeated No. 1 Stanford to take home the trophy.

Yesterday, the coach and her team returned to Evanston, and the celebration was on. After exiting the bus, players sprinted into the sprinkler on Northwestern's field hockey field. Dianna Lee, who sank the final putt on 18 for the win, ran through the crowd of waiting supporters clutching the trophy.

Northwestern Women’s Golf is back on campus with the trophy, and they’re having a blast. Immediately ran to the sprinkler on the field hockey field: pic.twitter.com/wFpi4g662e

— Ryan Cole (@rtc_2004) May 22, 2025

It was an incredible moment for the players who worked so hard to get there, but it was also a moment Fletcher had been building towards for 17 years.

"This was the dream," Fletcher said. "From day one."

After the party settled down, Lauryn Nguyen, Lee and Fletcher spoke with the media, and the players praised their coach profusely.

"She knows me almost better than I know myself," Nguyen said. "Even on the course, she knows things about me that even I don’t realize."

One of the best camera shots on Wednesday's broadcast was Fletcher walking up the 18th fairway with Lee before her final putt.

"Having her walk the last couple holes in my match was really comforting because I knew that her presence while walking up to that 18th green instilled a lot of courage in me.... I could really feel how much trust she had in me, and she never gave me any pressure," Lee said of the moment.

Fletcher herself was as humble as ever, speaking about how her focus has always been the process. The team wasn't talking about a national championship, she said. They were just keeping their heads down and putting in the work.

One person Fletcher credited for the win was assistant coach Beth Miller. Miller has worked with Fletcher for all of her 17 seasons, so this was the culmination of a long journey for her, too.

“We’re not here, and we don’t accomplish what we do without Beth as an assistant. She’s been absolutely incredible," Fletcher said. "We have that assistant tag on her name, but she’s so much more than that.”

The 'Cats won this championship for themselves, but they also won it for their coaches, under-appreciated leaders on campus who have been representing this university for almost as long as some of its students have been alive. Make no mistake, Fletcher seemed thrilled to etch this team into the history books as a national champion.

“Last night, we just kept saying 'I can’t believe we’ve done this. We’ve really done this,'" Fletcher said.