Eastern Michigan Women’s Golf Makes Historic Run
By Tom Lang
The post-season accolades keep rolling in after the EMU women’s golf team made a historic run to reach the NCAA Final Four in late May.
Few could conceive how coach Josh Brewer and the young women would perform at such a high level at season’s end. Here are a few limited examples:
Beat No. 5 nationally ranked Texas in the NCAA match play quarterfinals, the first win for any team from Michigan in the NCAA finals.
Competed in 10 events during the regular season and placed in the top four in all but one (3 wins, 5 second place, 1 fourth place, 1 seventh place)… plus in the MAC Championships, NCAA Tallahassee Regional, and stroke play at the NCAA Championships.
Josh Brewer was named the Golfweek Women’s National Coach of the Year, the WGCA East Region Coach of the Year, and is a finalist for the WGCA National Coach of the Year… all were the first in EMU history.
Baiyok Sukterm took the title at the Silicon Valley Showcase.
Janae Leovao, Jasmine Leovao, and Sukterm were named All-MAC First Team, Savannah de Bock was named All-MAC Second Team and MAC All-Tournament Team, and Matilde Zocchi was named the MAC Freshman of the Year
Janae Leovao is the first All-American in program history (HM WGCA, 3rd Team Golfweek). In match play at the NCAA Championships, Janae played the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked players in the NCAA. She defeated No. 1 Farah O’Keefe of Texas, 5&4, and was down one hole against No. 2 Paula Marin Sampedro of Stanford when the match was called (Stanford won 5-0). Leovao was ranked No. 55 at the time of the matches.
Janae Leovao made the largest improvements of any player on the team. She started the season last fall ranked No. 148 and finished the season No. 46. She had never won a college tournament in her career at Long Beach State, but won twice for EMU in the fall, at The Southern and the Leadership & Golf. (Her twin sister Jasmine was two-time Big West player of the year at Long Beach. The pair gave EMU a powerful one-two punch.)
Two years ago, Brewer’s time at Georgia Tech had come to an end. Retirement was certainly a consideration. Then the GameAbove team reached out and ultimately brought in Brewer and his former player and top assistant Caterina Don; who has played in two Augusta National Women’s Amateurs.
“I knew they were the Eagles,” Brewer said of his pre-interview knowledge. “I knew that Earl Boykins played basketball there when I was in school in Indiana at that time. And besides that, I knew nothing. I really didn't know.
“I did not know how to pronounce Ypsilanti or where it was located. But I saw passion and support internally that people wanted something to be super proud of, and I felt like, you know what, we can build this. We can make everyone in Ypsilanti, around Eastern Michigan super proud of women's golf.”
After the first two rounds of stroke play at the NCAA Finals, EMU was in 10th place on the outside looking in to crack the top 8 for match play. But in the third round, the team scored lower than anyone in the field and vaulted to seed No. 5, before beating Texas in the quarterfinal.
“I woke up that morning and I told my assistant, it's either going to be the greatest day ever, or the worst, because I am feeling eerily calm and have no emotion,” Brewer told me. “And that is super strange for me because people saw on TV how emotional I get. I know it's weird, but at breakfast that morning the team was super loose, and I was like, I think this is going to go okay.
“I didn’t look much at the leaderboard. We made the turn and I'm like, oh my gosh, we're in third here at the national championship. And every time Caterina would text me, we’d have like emojis for birdies or things, and she just kept sending them. I'm like, please, don't stop. It was just one of those days that I'll remember forever in coaching. I actually screenshotted it because we were low round of the day. We beat Stanford and USC …we just had one of those days you'd love to bottle up.”
The twin sisters will move on to pro golf with the support of GameAbove, and Brewer will be tasked to reload. But with all the earned fanfare at the 2026 NCAA Finals, the task will be easier than before.
Brewer now definitely knows how to pronounce Ypsilanti – as do so many others.
