GREENFIELD — For the second straight season, the Greenfield-Central girls golf program will have a new face leading the way.
After a one-year stint, Jeremy Spencer has been replaced as the girls head coach by Annaliese Fox.
While this season will be Fox’s first with the Greenfield-Central program, her stamp on high school golf in Hancock County was made a few years ago at another county school – New Palestine.
Fox was a four-year varsity standout for the Dragons and has an array of high school accolades under her belt.
“It’s a really good opportunity for me to get my foot in the door with coaching, and it really excites me to be a part of Hancock County golf again,” Fox said.
In her high school days in the late 2010s, Fox was a four-time county and Hoosier Heritage Conference champion, collected three straight sectional titles and advanced to the state finals three times.
She finished tied for 15th as a sophomore, tied for 13th as a junior and tied for 27th as a senior.
She also holds the New Palestine school record for nine-hole score (32) and 18-hole score (68).
In 2017 and 2018 she won back-to-back Hoosier Junior Championships.
One of her coaches through those high school years was current New Palestine head coach Sarah O’Brien.
“We have talked here and there about coaching and what I need to prepare. It’s been great,” Fox said. “She’s [O’Brien] really opened my eyes a bit more, and she’s showing me the right coaching path.”
Her success followed into her college years at IUPUI.
After playing sporadically in her freshman and sophomore seasons, Fox broke through in her junior season.
She was one of just two Jaguars golfers to play in all 28 rounds that season, and led the team in scoring average (76.96) and winning percentage (.688), while tying for the team lead in top-10 finishes (4).
Fox tied for medalist honors at the Lady Jaguar Invitational with a season-best 148, opened the season by tying for fourth among 88 entrants at the Redbird Fall Invitational with a career-best 3-over-par 219, and finished tied for 13th at the Horizon League Championships with a 54-hole score of 234.
She capped off her college career this past spring with another dominant season.
She once again led the team in scoring average (75.58) and top-10 finishes (5), and was the team leader in rounds of par or better with four.
Her 75.58 scoring average for the season was the sixth-best mark in program history, and she was the team’s top finisher in five of 10 tournaments.
Fox earned her first career win at the Lady Jaguar Invitational with a 36-hole, 2-over-par 146. She was second out of 100 players at the Butler Fall Invitational with an even-par 210 which was a career-best score and the second-best 54-hole score in program history. She ended things with a 10th-place finish at the Horizon League Championships.
In both her junior and senior seasons, she was voted First-Team All-Horizon League, and she closed her IUPUI career ranked No. 4 in career scoring average (76.97), No. 6 in career top-10 finishes (12) and No. 9 in career rounds played (88).
While she was doing all of that, coaching was something that was always on her mind.
“Coaching has always been something that I’ve wanted to do. Playing golf in college kind of opened my eyes to coaching and getting into the PGA program as fast as I could,” Fox said. “That’ll be a two-year program to get my PGA Member membership, and that’s the goal, but the goal is also to keep coaching and giving lessons and moving up in the program and just trying to become the best instructor and coach I can be.”
She interviewed for the Greenfield-Central job earlier this summer and wasn’t sure what to expect, but a week after her interview she got the call with the good news she was hoping for.
“It was a lot of waiting and meeting to get everything to fall into place. I was very shocked after my interview because they told me it would be like the middle of July until I knew, which was about two weeks after my interview,” Fox said. “The next thing I knew, about a week later, I got a call asking if I wanted the job.”
While practices didn’t officially start until yesterday, Fox has already met with the team and is excited to get started.
“I have been around A few of the girls for the past two years, I’ve tried to help out when I can. I used to work out over at Hawk’s Tail as much as I could in the summertime and then in the fall before I went back to school, so I definitely got to meet the girls then when they were starting school,” Fox said. “It’s going to be a different program this year.”
