The Swarthmore men’s golf team has welcomed numerous women as walk-on players over the years. Currently there are two female players competing on the men’s team: Ava Chon ’26 and Bori Chung ’28.
Chon is a senior from Princeton, NJ, who went to the Peddie School for high school. She is a medical anthropology major on the pre-medicine track. Over the course of her three seasons, she has boasted numerous awards. Chon is a two-time Centennial Honor Roll awardee (2024, 2025), and in a singular week during her 2024-25 season she played two rounds, shot a season-low 81 to win the Ursinus Fall Invitational, and was awarded Centennial Athlete of the Week. In her 2023-2024 season, she appeared in one round and shot an 89 at the MAC Preview.
Chung, the second woman on the men’s team, is a sophomore from Englewood Cliffs, NJ, and went to Bergen County Academies. During the 2024-2025 season, she shot a 95 at the Ursinus Spring Invitational in her lone round of the season.
Their presence underscores a longstanding reality: Although Swarthmore has women competing in golf, there is no official women’s golf program. Instead, players like Chon and Chung must play on the men’s team, leaving Swarthmore one of the few Centennial Conference schools without a women’s program.
With this being said, the gender discrepancy has not gone unnoticed by the Swarthmore community. In December of 2022, Syon Bhanot, associate professor of economics and academic advisor for the golf team, was quoted in a Phoenix article saying “[The need for a women’s team] is reflective of the fact that in almost every sport there’s a men’s and a women’s team here at the college. Golf, for some reason, did not have that, and there is no obvious reason given that women’s golf is extremely popular. Again, it feels like we’re just a little behind the times, and this is getting us caught up.”
I wonder what has become of these talks and why there has been no initiative to start a women’s golf team. Nearly three years after the publication of that article, conversations appear to have stalled. In a recent email exchange, Bhanot acknowledged that he is unsure of any progress on the women’s golf team. Furthermore, Head Golf Coach Tana Thomas did not respond to a request for comment. This lack of clarity raises key questions: What has become of those initial talks? Why has there been no movement towards forming a women’s golf program, despite demonstrated interest and participation from female golfers?
These questions also invite larger questions about compliance and equity. Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs, is often invoked in conversations about athletic opportunities. Colleges are expected to provide opportunities proportional to enrollment for women and men to compete in athletics, and to meet demonstrated student interests when possible, among other requirements.
Funding is another unanswered question. Launching another varsity sports program requires lots of resources: travel budgeting, coaching staff, recruitment, and equipment or technology. However, compared to other sports, golf is relatively low cost, predominantly because of its small rosters. Many peer institutions in the Centennial Conference — around half — already field both men and women’s teams, suggesting that Swarthmore is lagging behind regional standards.
For players like Chon and Chung, the absence of a women’s team has not stopped them from competing, but it has limited the recognition and structural support they might otherwise have received. Walking onto the men’s team means adapting to different competitive fields and losing the opportunity to test themselves directly against peers in women’s collegiate golf during practices. The larger issue seems to not be centered on whether women can or should play golf on a men’s team at Swarthmore because I am unequivocally in favor of Chung and Chon’s decisions, but whether Swarthmore is fully honoring its formerly stated commitment to beginning a women’s golf initiative. As long as women prove they want to play golf in college and are already doing so under the umbrella of the men’s team, the case for launching a women’s team grows stronger each year.
For now, the matter remains unsolved until there is clearer communication from the Swarthmore athletic department. The questions linger: Is it a matter of budgetary constraints? Administrative priorities? Or has the conversation simply been shelved for more “pressing” matters? What is certain is that students like Chon and Chung are keeping the discussion alive through their play, reminding Swarthmore that women’s golf is not a hypothetical in a far-off universe, it is already happening, just without the institutional support it has earned.
