“I had all my classes in the morning and then went out to Dubsdread,” Bell said. But it did pay $1,000 a year to Dubsdread Country Club to allow its students to play there. I never missed a class, but I’ll admit it was hard to keep my mind off golf!” Rollins did not have a women’s golf program at that time. President Hamilton Holt was wonderful to everyone there and the classes were so small-we’d often sit outside in the Horseshoe. “I saw a Rollins College catalogue, transferred, and I’ve never regretted it. “I left Boston in three feet of snow, got down there, and said, ‘I’ve got to move to Florida so I can play golf all the time!’” recalled Bell from her home at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in North Carolina. When Peggy Kirk Bell was a freshman at Sargent College in Boston, in 1938, her father sent her to Miami for spring break. In many respects, the College is not very different from what it was when Bell decided to transfer to Rollins 70 years ago. They join an impressive list of Rollins golfers who have led the way down the links since Rollins first entered the world of intercollegiate golf in 1931-names like Peggy Kirk Bell ’43, Alice O’Neal Dye ’48 ’02H (wife of legendary golf course designer Pete Dye ’50), Betty Rowland Probasco ’51, Marlene Stewart Streit ’56, Barbara McIntire ’58, Jim Curti ’59, Mike Nicolette ’78, and LPGA stars Jane Blalock ’67, Hollis Stacy ’76, Muffin Spencer-Devlin ’76, Debbie Austin ’70, Julie Larsen Piers ’84, and Charlotte Campbell ’06. The student-athletes-all five starters on the women’s team are Academic All-Americans, with a combined GPA of 3.63 last spring-enjoy the opportunity Rollins affords them to excel both on and off the course.
This year’s Rollins golfers comprise a reigning NCAA Division II women’s championship team and a men’s team just four years removed from its last championship and itching to return. Among the students arriving on campus late last August for the beginning of a new academic year were top young golfers from the United States, Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia-golfers like NCAA individual national champions Joanna Coe ’11 and Mariana De Biase ’06.
They come with the expectation of winning, and the belief that whether they win or lose on the golf course, they will receive the college experience of a lifetime. They come through the referrals of friends and graduates. They come for a climate that permits year-round competition on the fairways. They come to Rollins because of its reputation in both academics and golf. Rollins may not have a golf course, but in the world of collegiate golf, it has a reputation as one of the most dominant golf powerhouses in the country.