Schilling’s journey as Nicholls golf coach has been a long, unique experience

Any number of words could be used to describe James Schilling.

As a coach in his 23rd season leading a small Division I program like Nicholls, and his 26th year at the school, he could be characterized as a survivor, an outlier, even an anomaly.

Programs like Nicholls generally don’t boast a coach with so many years of head coaching experience at the school. A more apt example is that the other nine Colonel head coaches have a combined 37 years in their tenure at the Thibodaux school.

If nothing else, the Nicholls golf coach has become an introspective, deep thinker.

“Nicholls is not for everybody,” Schilling quickly conceded. “We’ve had some turnover, but it’s also a place, if you can find your footing and you can really understand how things work, it can be a really good place to coach, if it’s what you are looking for.

“I’m from south Louisiana. I’m from south of I-10. This is only an hour-and-a-half from where my parents still live. So it wasn’t all that different, just a little slower pace maybe, but a really good quality of life, I felt. I really liked the area and wound up staying.”

Schilling’s collegiate golf journey began when he chose to attend Centenary College in Shreveport out of Comeaux High School in Lafayette.

“I was fortunate enough to be All-State there,” Schilling recounted. “I had some success at Junior Golf. At that time, Centenary was Division I. They really had good golf facilities in the early ’90s. I wound up going there. Nicholls had offered me out of high school, along with a lot of other now-Southland schools.”

The Centenary golf program was undergoing numerous coaching changes and Schilling ended up transferring to Nicholls after two years in north Louisiana.

“It probably wasn’t the best fit for me at Centenary,” Schilling said. “I would have had three coaches in three years. So the guy that signed me lasted for one year, got let go, and then we had another guy he was going to be gone. So I wound up just actually transferring here.”

Playing at Nicholls for a couple of seasons, Schilling ended up lettering for four years at two different schools.

After finishing his playing career, Schilling served one unique season as a graduate assistant under coach M.T. “Tic” Tatum.

Tatum’s background was as a successful football coach who sort of happened to be the caretaker of the Nicholls golf program. As Tatum decided to transition out of his role as golf coach, he groomed Schilling to be his successor.

Tatum, Schilling said, approached Mike Knight, a longtime Colonels baseball coach who was serving as the Nicholls athletic director at the time.

“He said, ‘look, I think James would be a good fit for the team. He is young, but he can stay on and kind of learn from me,’” Schilling recalled. “I can travel and that’s where I really learned. The recruiting and stuff, I had a good understanding. I had a good lay of the land because I knew all the players because I had played in the state. I knew a lot of the courses because I had some junior success playing in tournaments. I knew all that already, but the inner workings of the university of how you handle the schedule, how you handle HR, how you handle paperwork, team travel, recruiting, fundraising, all those other things, that’s all stuff I had to learn.

“All the golf stuff, I would handle. He (Tatum) realized he really was not a golfer. He had a football background– very successful, loved the game, but he was at an age, and he would be the first to admit this, the game of golf was changing and more and more kids in high school were playing it. He needed someone with a golfing background to be the coach, not just like a sponsor. I think he would say that, too.”

With Schilling under Tatum’s wing, the Colonels went on to finish fourth in the Southland Conference, the best-ever showing for Nicholls in the league.

Now 48, Schilling became the head golf coach at Nicholls in 1998 at the age of 23.

“It was a different time,” Schilling reflected. “I was very fortunate and I thought I was mature for my age to be able to put in that position. I learned a lot. I learned so much those first few years in coaching, looking back and thinking on it now.

Being a head coach, Schilling quickly learned, took a buck-stops-here mentality when it came to making decisions.

“What I quickly had to learn was not every player is going to like your decision, but that’s really not your job. It’s your job as the coach to do what’s best and fair for the group. What one player or person may not like or doesn’t want their way, especially with a sport like golf, it’s your job as a coach to try to get them to understand, if I don’t handle it this way, I understand you want what you want or how you want to do it or whatever, but that can be a disadvantage or unfair to another teammate,” Schilling said.

After being on the job for two years, Schilling took on double duty when Nicholls added a women’s golf program in 2000.

“It was a different, especially on the mental side; how you handle things, a message is delivered, how you communicate, was it totally different between the men’s and the women’s team,” Schilling quickly learned.

Having to coach two teams was a daunting task, but Schilling got a bit of help from Louise “Do” Bonin, a former coach of the Nicholls women’s basketball program as well as women’s administrator within the athletic department.

“She fought and was able to get me a graduate assistant,” Schilling said. “So I had a person that could help with that. Typically what I did with that was I would basically alternate. I would take a former player that I felt would be trustworthy or good. One year, I would have a guy and then the next year I would have a female just kind of go back-and-forth and that would be the assistant.

“By that time I had coached three years already – not that I knew everything – but I was much more confident than I was when I just started. After three years, the majority of the players that were there on the men’s side, they’re out, they all graduated and were gone. You’re basically just starting this team from scratch, and I was like 25 years old.”

After 10 years, Nicholls dropped the women’s program.

“That was a tough situation,” Schilling remembered. “That was a time when higher ed was getting drastic cuts. It was sent down that we were going to disband the team, but the players would be allowed to continue their education.

“We had an older team that year, so we had a lot of seniors that were actually graduating. That’s what the university decided to do at that time.”

From his early days as Nicholls coach, Schilling said he realized he had to reach out to the community for support if the golf program was to be successful.

“I learned different things that were important,” said Schilling. “The ADs that I had here, I learned, ‘look, if you want to have maybe a few extra things for your team, you’re going to have to fundraise, you’re going to have to meet some people in the community. You’re going to have to get out there and you’re going to get some support. Get the golfing community support behind your team,’ and I was able to do that, and a lot of people not only helped me, but really helped the team. That made the experience here at Nicholls, for me, a good experience.

“There are some extra things that you have to do, but nowadays you basically have to do that anywhere.”

Tatum was a guy everyone knew in Thibodaux. Schilling took advantage of that relationship in reaching out for support, and then expanding it farther out.

“I took some of those connections and expanded on it more towards the Houma area and down to South Lafourche. That helped me a lot meeting, meeting people in South Lafourche. One thing about not only the Houma area, but that Central, South Lafourche area, if you show an interest, there are people that can really support you, and we still have a good run with that,” Schilling said.

Over the years, Schilling realized that in order to attract golf talent to Nicholls, he had to sell not only the program, but the university and community to would-be recruits.

“For me, the job is easier because Nicholls has a lot more to offer now,” said Schilling. “With new residence halls, a beautiful campus. We have a golf facility on campus. We have access to two 18-hole championship golf courses.

“Every university can have struggles from time to time. You need to set that aside.”

“The overall student-athlete experience, what my players get from academic counseling to strength and conditioning to wellness, health care from the hospital to the tournaments that they play,” he continued. “The overall package that they get is night and day from when I started coaching. That’s what made it a tough sell when I was beginning.”

Schilling has seen his share of changes at Nicholls over the years.

“I’ve been here long enough to see it improve, from the expansion of campus, both where the golf facility to where the rec center is, to the culinary school, to the new greenhouse that we have, the redone auditorium in Talbot (Hall), all the new stuff in Peltier (Hall) that’s been redone, the football complex,” he said.

The university, Schilling said, also has done a good job of selling itself.

“I think the university has done a really good job in investing in things that people want. People want to come to the games and have nice facilities, have a nice end zone complex, have a nice turf field where we don’t have to worry about weather how poorly the conditions and the smell or whatever would be from the when it was a natural grass field. Investing in things like that in a town where people need something to do,” said Schilling.

Then there is the community aspect.

“Thibodaux is a very, very unique place. Yes, you have New Orleans, and yes, you have Lafayette, but it’s just far enough away where a lot of people just want to do stuff right here in town. That’s different than, in say Lake Charles or Monroe, Shreveport or something like that, or even New Orleans. I think it’s easier for us in a lot of ways to get traction because, in some ways, you’re kind of the only show in town,” Schilling said.

In terms of top moments during his years as Nicholls coach, one particular accomplishment comes to mind for Schilling.

“The high point would be the first Division I individual championship, winning that conference championship,” said Schilling.

That occurred when Albert Badosa-Soler, now a Nicholls Hall of Famer, earned top individual medalist at the 2017 Southland Conference Championship.

Nicholls has had some top finishes over the years, but still has yet to win a team championship.

“I wouldn’t say low point – we’ve had some disappointing finishes and disappointing years where I felt our team was more competitive than how we how we played or finished at the at the conference tournament, but I try not to really dwell on that too much,” Schilling said. “Our team this year struggled in the fall. There’s no doubt about it. You have to believe that it’s going to get better. At the same time, I think maybe it’s unfair to compare teams present day with previous when you didn’t have the transfer portal. That changes everything.”

The recruiting process with the transfer portal and a transformation by the university represent external changes. But what about changes from within the coach himself?

“I’m a much better listener than I was as a young coach. I would say maybe a better communicator, but definitely a person that’s more understanding,” a self-critiquing Schilling said.

While originally not expecting to be in Thibodaux long term, those sentiments changed rather quickly for someone who is now a fixture at Nicholls.

“I think when I was able to get some community support, that made a big difference for me,” Schilling said. “I felt at a young age I appreciated that I felt that people who were willing to support the team and support the cause were pleased that I was here, was pleased with the job that I was doing. They were glad there was some stability. They were pleased that they had someone that was a former player that knows the game, that understands the game. I host college tournaments and able to do different things.

“They made the difference, I would say, because I feel like if I wouldn’t have had that support and if I wouldn’t have been welcomed that way, I’m not sure that I would still be here right now.”