Mic Potter
5/10/2002 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
Mic Potter
Head Coach
*3rd Year at Alabama
Entering his third season at the helm of the Crimson Tide women’s golf program and 26th overall in college golf, head coach Mic Potter has already established a legacy of his own.
Potter, who came to the Capstone after a Hall-of-Fame career at Furman, led the Tide to its second NCAA Championship appearance in program history in his very first year at Alabama and repeated the feat in 2007, reaffirming his status as one of the prominent coaches in women’s collegiate golf.
The honors continue to pile up for Potter, who helped the Tide become a power to contend with in the ever-competitive Southeastern Conference.
The veteran coach won his 10th Conference Coach of the Year award overall and his first in the SEC when he was named the league’s Co-Coach of the Year alongside Georgia’s Todd McCorkle.
In addition, Potter finished tutoring All-American and two-time All-SEC performer Jenny Suh, who left as the Tide’s all-time career scoring average leader after just two seasons in Tuscaloosa.
The honors were certainly well deserved in 2006-07, as Potter led the Tide to one of its best spring seasons in school history, with the team finishing in the top five in each of its outings, including a fifth-place finish at the SEC Championship, its best finish at the event since 1998.
The Tide set a school record in the fall, shooting a 285 in round two of the Cougar Classic, bettering the previous best of 290 set in the spring of 2006.
Alabama finished seventh at the East Regional, good enough for the third NCAA Championship appearance in school history and the second in as many seasons for Potter.
The legendary coach made an impact from the start. In his first season, Potter led his team to a tournament championship in his very first outing by winning Alabama’s own UA-Ann Rhoads Intercollegiate in early September 2005.
The team set a school record that spring by shooting a 290 at the LSU/Cleveland Classic in March, and recorded two top-five finishes in the spring season.
After qualifying for the 2006 East regional, the Tide put together an unlikely postseason run by defeating Virginia in a playoff hole to advance to the school’s second-ever NCAA Championship appearance.
Looking back on that resume, it comes as no surprise that Potter had his very first Tide team competing for a national championship in his first year in Tuscaloosa.
On June 17, 2005, The University of Alabama named 1994 NGCA Hall of Fame honoree Potter as its new women’s golf coach. By doing so, the Crimson Tide added one of the most illustrious names in women’s golf to its already rich golf heritage.
Potter, one of the most experienced and successful coaches in the nation, has one of the most outstanding resumes in women’s collegiate golf, having guided Furman, a school competing in the Southern Conference, to national prominence in a long career with the Paladins.
A 1994 National Golf Coaches Hall of Fame inductee, Potter spent 23 years coaching the Furman women’s team, including 10 years during which he served as the Paladin’s Director of Intercollegiate Golf.
During his two-decade tenure with the Paladins, Potter guided Furman to 15 NCAA Championship berths and six top-10 national finishes, including an NCAA runner-up finish in 1987. He has yet to coach a season in which his team has not reached NCAA regional competition, a streak dating back to 1993, the first season in which the regional format was established.
Potter’s coaching accomplishments stand by themselves as an indication of the abilities of the 51-year old mentor. In addition to these outstanding achievements, his players have recorded astounding success, at both the intercollegiate level and in the professional ranks.
The ability to build and maintain a program are certainly among Potter’s strengths when considering the amazing run of success he had throughout his career at Furman. Potter took the school, with an enrollment of approximately 2,500 students, in to the upper tier of women’s golf schools, leading the Paladins to unprecedented heights.
Potter was named Southern Conference Coach of the Year eight times and led his teams to 36 tournament titles, which puts him third among all active women’s golf coaches. To put that remarkable statistic in perspective, the Alabama women’s golf program had won 19 team titles through the beginning of the 2005-06 season, a span of 31 years.
The Paladins won 10 Southern Conference Championships since the tournament’s inception in 1994, including the 2004-05 championship.
He has coached 18 NGCA All-Americans, nine NGCA All-Scholar Team selections, 38 All-Southern Conference selections, two first team All-SEC performer, 12 conference players of the year and four conference freshmen of the year.
One of the most important standards of success for any coach in major collegiate athletics is his or her ability to place players in the professional ranks while guiding them to a degree. Measuring Potter by these standards again places him among the very best in the nation.
In 2004, Potter had seven of his former pupils on the LPGA tour, more than any other college coach from one school. In fact, only four schools: Arizona, Arizona State, Florida and Texas, had more than seven athletes on the LPGA player list in 2004. More importantly, each of the seven players coached by Potter had earned a degree.
In the exceedingly competitive LPGA atmosphere, Potter’s former players have had long, successful careers in professional golf. Through the end of the 2004 season, former Potter pupils had amassed over 65 seasons on tour and over $8.5 million in career earnings.
Leading that group is former Furman standout and Paladin Hall-of-Famer Dottie Pepper. Pepper had an illustrious LPGA career, winning 17 events, including the 1992 and 1999 Kraft Nabisco Championships. She earned over $5 million in career winnings before ending her 20-year professional career in 2003.
By any standard, Mic Potter has proven himself to be one of the best women’s golf coaches in the entire nation for over two decades. He has built a successful program and maintained that by recruiting and cultivating talented players who advance to the professional ranks and obtain their degrees.
Potter replaced Betty Palmer, who retired in the spring of 2005 after 17 years coaching the Crimson Tide women.
A 1977 graduate of Cortland State University, Potter majored in physical education while earning four varsity letters: three in soccer and one in golf. He is married to the former Kim O’Branski of Ithaca, N.Y. The couple has two sons, Ryan and Corey.
