Jeff Groff - Head Coach

Contact: jeff.groff@allegheny.edu
814-332-2811

After a successful inaugural season, head coach Jeff Groff begins his second year at the helm of Allegheny's women's golf team, hoping his squad can repeat an amazing performance from a year ago.

Groff, entering his 22nd year with the Gators overall, led his fledgling program on a remarkable run in 2005-06. Allegheny won six tournaments over the course of the fall and spring, and ranked among the top-20 in NCAA Division III throughout the season.

The Gators put to rest any doubt as to their abilities early on, capturing their first fall tournament at Baldwin-Wallace College by an impressive 14 strokes. Allegheny added three more victories at Penn State Behrend, Ocean City, and Washington & Jefferson last fall before wrapping up with a sixth-place showing at the NCAA Preview at the Mission Inn Resort in Florida.

The 2006 spring season saw more success as the golfers put together two runner-up finishes at tournaments held at McDaniel College and Otterbein College, as well as victories at the Westminster College Invitational and the Gannon University Invitational.

Allegheny's upstart program continued its meteoric rise by receiving a bid to compete at the NCAA Division III Championships - one of just 10 teams from across the nation. The Gators finished ninth in their first trip to the national championships.

"Any time a team gets a bid to the national playoffs, it is a testament to the program and what the players have done throughout the year," commented Groff last spring. "To do it in the first year is even more special. I'll be honest, this was never the plan coming in. Our goal was always to build a program that would compete first at the local and regional level, and then hopefully over time get to the national level."

Groff, a two-time North Coast Athletic Conference Coach of the Year for the Gator men's golf team, is a 1983 graduate of Millersville (Pa.) University, where he played baseball and was an Academic All-American outfielder as a senior. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from his alma mater and went on to earn his master's in sports administration from Kent State University in 1985.

A native of Lancaster, Pa., Groff attended Penn Manor High School, where he played varsity soccer, basketball and baseball. He also is an avid golfer and a student of the game.

Groff is married to the former Chris Binnie, a 1989 Allegheny graduate.