Xavier University Athletics
Breanna Jenco and the Road to Four Straight BIG EAST Conference Championships
05.07.23 | Women's Golf, Featured
CINCINNATI - There's no roadmap for a dream. Or instructions when you get there – only the ambition and perseverance to make the most of it.
Breanna Jenco used to tell people about her dream.
"I would say that being the women's golf coach at Xavier University is my dream job," said Jenco, a former golfer and 2013 Xavier alum.
She can remember telling Greg Christopher, Xavier's Vice President for Administration and Director of Athletics, the same thing when she interviewed for the job in 2015, after only two years as a graduate assistant coach at Akron.
"Greg Christopher said, 'Well, if you land your dream job at 24 what happens after that?' And I said, 'That's just step one,'" Jenco said.
Not even a decade later, step one has taken Xavier's women's golf program to heights it's never seen before with four consecutive BIG EAST Conference championships and four trips to the NCAA Division I Women's Golf Championship.
The fact that it's played out the way it has was really a miracle of timing.
When Jenco was at Akron as a graduate assistant she was working on her master's degree in Accounting. She had a corporate job lined up after she finished, but over those two years Jenco realized she wanted to coach.
"I really wanted to coach, but I also felt like to be a college golf coach, I had to be willing to go wherever," said Jenco. "In my head, it was more of 'I'd really like to be the Xavier coach someday.'"
Jenco's coach at Xavier was Tom Elfers and when he retired, Jenco called him and said, "Coach, you can't retire yet, I'm too young. They're never going to hire me," Jenco laughed.
But Jenco was taking a coaching class at Akron. One of the requirements in that class was to formulate a coaching philosophy. She had ideas from when she played at Xavier, and new ideas from coaching at Akron.
Her dad, David Patz, who's now her volunteer assistant coach at Xavier, helped her.
"I really started to develop that philosophy and that class really made me gather all those thoughts and put it into a document," said Jenco, who remembers rambling in her interview with Susan Cross Lipnickey, Xavier's Senior Associate Athletics Director for Compliance and Student-Athlete Resources and SWA. "I had all these ideas and I probably did not do a good job of presenting and organizing it in a precise and quick way like you're supposed to do in a job interview."
Despite how she thought she sounded in those interviews, Jenco believed in her ideas to make Xavier great, and if nothing else, the administration saw her passion, enthusiasm, and her love of Xavier.
Turns out, passion, love, and enthusiasm must have been exactly what Xavier was looking for. The anxiety of interviewing for her dream job soon evolved into preparing for her first season as a head coach.
Jenco's situation was a little unprecedented – not because she wasn't qualified to coach – but because her first team at Xavier included a golfer that Jenco was teammates with when she was a senior for the Musketeers.
"Those early days they would tell you I was pretty strict. I was very concerned about being so close in age to them and drawing that line of – I'm the leader here. I want to help you get to the next level, but at the end of the day, I'm here to make you better. I'm not here to be your best friend," Jenco said. "Even that senior (Shane Crutchfield) that was a freshman when I was a senior, I remember that first phone call and I said, 'Listen, I know we're good friends and I want us to continue to be good friends after this year, but for this year, I need you to fall in line and support the rules that I'm trying to implement and the culture we're trying to set.' And she did an awesome job with that."
The early years were about building the ball – a plan, culture, and rules – and the years that followed were about getting that ball moving and rolling.
For the last few years, that ball has been rolling downhill.
And Jenco doesn't want it to stop anytime soon.
Jenco developed her day-to-day approach with her dad, who was a high school coach. She still does many of the same things, but a lot of that approach has evolved over the years. Fundamental work is more individualized. She uses statistics to construct individual practice plans.
"Every player is going to be different in terms of what works for them and what helps them get better," said Jenco. "And I want to figure that out. Every individual getting better is going to help us get better so I don't care how it changes my game plan. I just want to make sure we figure out what it is and run with it."
From reconstructing the roster – making it more competitive top to bottom – and instituting a culture that matched Jenco's passion and hunger for success, the Musketeers finally kicked the conference championship door down in 2019.
A big part of Jenco's plan and Xavier's emergence has been finding the right players. The Musketeers have had star power recently with Mikayla Fitzpatrick and now with Emma McMyler, who was just named BIG EAST Golfer of the Year for a record third consecutive season.
Jenco's gift in finding the right players comes from looking in a very specific spot.
"My list has to be double or triple the size of the Power 5 schools because they flash their Power 5 name in front of a kid and those kids eat that up in a heartbeat," Jenco said. "Whereas, I'm looking for a kid who feels like they got a little snubbed by those people or they should be getting recruited better than they are, and they see the growth Xavier's making and see the excitement in that and they want to go prove people wrong."
That's the culture Jenco's built. And she loves it.
"That's who I am and the vision I've had for the program is you don't expect Xavier University to win a national title but at some point, we're going to do it because I believe that we can," said Jenco. "And if I can continue to get the right kids in here that believe that too, I think we can get the job done."
Jenco attributes her program's success to work ethic.
"We're not getting the most talented, most prized junior golfers to come in here and make us who we are," said Jenco. "We're getting people that come in with a little bit of a chip on their shoulder that want to prove people wrong, and they're willing to put in the work."
People are quick to point out the success, and how great it is that Xavier's won four conference championships in a row. But Jenco can't allow herself or her players to be satisfied.
"The goal is to take the program to national competitiveness and find a way to win a national championship," she said. "This is another step along the journey and I'm sure it's only going to get harder and harder.
"This is kind of do or die for me as a coach because people are just waiting for the bottom to fall out, right?"
The trick to dealing with increased expectations both internally and externally is to "Fall in love with the process," Jenco said. "I haven't lost any of the passion. I love the process. I'm excited to keep going."
Jenco and her Musketeers compete May 8-10 in the NCAA Westfield Regional at The Club at Chatham Hills Golf Course.
It's Xavier's fourth consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
Breanna Jenco used to tell people about her dream.
"I would say that being the women's golf coach at Xavier University is my dream job," said Jenco, a former golfer and 2013 Xavier alum.
She can remember telling Greg Christopher, Xavier's Vice President for Administration and Director of Athletics, the same thing when she interviewed for the job in 2015, after only two years as a graduate assistant coach at Akron.
"Greg Christopher said, 'Well, if you land your dream job at 24 what happens after that?' And I said, 'That's just step one,'" Jenco said.
Not even a decade later, step one has taken Xavier's women's golf program to heights it's never seen before with four consecutive BIG EAST Conference championships and four trips to the NCAA Division I Women's Golf Championship.
The fact that it's played out the way it has was really a miracle of timing.
When Jenco was at Akron as a graduate assistant she was working on her master's degree in Accounting. She had a corporate job lined up after she finished, but over those two years Jenco realized she wanted to coach.
"I really wanted to coach, but I also felt like to be a college golf coach, I had to be willing to go wherever," said Jenco. "In my head, it was more of 'I'd really like to be the Xavier coach someday.'"
Jenco's coach at Xavier was Tom Elfers and when he retired, Jenco called him and said, "Coach, you can't retire yet, I'm too young. They're never going to hire me," Jenco laughed.
But Jenco was taking a coaching class at Akron. One of the requirements in that class was to formulate a coaching philosophy. She had ideas from when she played at Xavier, and new ideas from coaching at Akron.
Her dad, David Patz, who's now her volunteer assistant coach at Xavier, helped her.
"I really started to develop that philosophy and that class really made me gather all those thoughts and put it into a document," said Jenco, who remembers rambling in her interview with Susan Cross Lipnickey, Xavier's Senior Associate Athletics Director for Compliance and Student-Athlete Resources and SWA. "I had all these ideas and I probably did not do a good job of presenting and organizing it in a precise and quick way like you're supposed to do in a job interview."
Despite how she thought she sounded in those interviews, Jenco believed in her ideas to make Xavier great, and if nothing else, the administration saw her passion, enthusiasm, and her love of Xavier.
Turns out, passion, love, and enthusiasm must have been exactly what Xavier was looking for. The anxiety of interviewing for her dream job soon evolved into preparing for her first season as a head coach.
Jenco's situation was a little unprecedented – not because she wasn't qualified to coach – but because her first team at Xavier included a golfer that Jenco was teammates with when she was a senior for the Musketeers.
"Those early days they would tell you I was pretty strict. I was very concerned about being so close in age to them and drawing that line of – I'm the leader here. I want to help you get to the next level, but at the end of the day, I'm here to make you better. I'm not here to be your best friend," Jenco said. "Even that senior (Shane Crutchfield) that was a freshman when I was a senior, I remember that first phone call and I said, 'Listen, I know we're good friends and I want us to continue to be good friends after this year, but for this year, I need you to fall in line and support the rules that I'm trying to implement and the culture we're trying to set.' And she did an awesome job with that."
The early years were about building the ball – a plan, culture, and rules – and the years that followed were about getting that ball moving and rolling.
For the last few years, that ball has been rolling downhill.
And Jenco doesn't want it to stop anytime soon.
Jenco developed her day-to-day approach with her dad, who was a high school coach. She still does many of the same things, but a lot of that approach has evolved over the years. Fundamental work is more individualized. She uses statistics to construct individual practice plans.
"Every player is going to be different in terms of what works for them and what helps them get better," said Jenco. "And I want to figure that out. Every individual getting better is going to help us get better so I don't care how it changes my game plan. I just want to make sure we figure out what it is and run with it."
From reconstructing the roster – making it more competitive top to bottom – and instituting a culture that matched Jenco's passion and hunger for success, the Musketeers finally kicked the conference championship door down in 2019.
A big part of Jenco's plan and Xavier's emergence has been finding the right players. The Musketeers have had star power recently with Mikayla Fitzpatrick and now with Emma McMyler, who was just named BIG EAST Golfer of the Year for a record third consecutive season.
Jenco's gift in finding the right players comes from looking in a very specific spot.
"My list has to be double or triple the size of the Power 5 schools because they flash their Power 5 name in front of a kid and those kids eat that up in a heartbeat," Jenco said. "Whereas, I'm looking for a kid who feels like they got a little snubbed by those people or they should be getting recruited better than they are, and they see the growth Xavier's making and see the excitement in that and they want to go prove people wrong."
That's the culture Jenco's built. And she loves it.
"That's who I am and the vision I've had for the program is you don't expect Xavier University to win a national title but at some point, we're going to do it because I believe that we can," said Jenco. "And if I can continue to get the right kids in here that believe that too, I think we can get the job done."
Jenco attributes her program's success to work ethic.
"We're not getting the most talented, most prized junior golfers to come in here and make us who we are," said Jenco. "We're getting people that come in with a little bit of a chip on their shoulder that want to prove people wrong, and they're willing to put in the work."
People are quick to point out the success, and how great it is that Xavier's won four conference championships in a row. But Jenco can't allow herself or her players to be satisfied.
"The goal is to take the program to national competitiveness and find a way to win a national championship," she said. "This is another step along the journey and I'm sure it's only going to get harder and harder.
"This is kind of do or die for me as a coach because people are just waiting for the bottom to fall out, right?"
The trick to dealing with increased expectations both internally and externally is to "Fall in love with the process," Jenco said. "I haven't lost any of the passion. I love the process. I'm excited to keep going."
Jenco and her Musketeers compete May 8-10 in the NCAA Westfield Regional at The Club at Chatham Hills Golf Course.
It's Xavier's fourth consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
Players Mentioned
/ Women's Golf
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