Mid-major Eastern Michigan is acting like a blue blood ahead of first NCAA Regional

Josh Brewer was contemplating retirement.

Two years ago Saturday, Brewer was fired after 12 years as the Georgia women's golf coach. Brewer, then 48, has spent most of his life coaching after a playing career at Indiana. But after missing the NCAA Championship by on shot, the Bulldogs decided to go in a different direction, and Brewer thought the same about his career, too.

That's when the phone rang. It was a call from Ypsilanti, Michigan.

"I was talking to GameAbove during the interview, and they're like, 'Think different,'" Brewer said. "I've always valued that as a coach. I came from the business world before coaching, so I've always felt like I am different than coaches.

"I thought it would be fun to take over a program ranked 226th and see if we could get it to this point."

In the age of college athletics where universities are eliminating their golf programs in cost-cutting efforts, Eastern Michigan has done the opposite. With the support of GameAbove, a privately held global investment company focused on sports, entertainment and giving and run by a group of EMU alumni, the Eagles have one of the biggest NIL budgets in the sport and are playing on the level of a Power 4 program instead of a mid-major. That investment culminates Monday, when EMU makes its first appearance in an NCAA Regional as the fifth seed in Tallahassee.

The Eagles enter NCAA postseason play ranked 27th in the NCAA Golf Rankings, a change of nearly 200 spots since Brewer took over as head coach. His assistant, Caterina Don, is in her second season coaching after a stellar five-year playing career at Georgia under Brewer. His star player, Savannah de Bock, followed him from Georgia and last year made history as the first EMU player to compete in an NCAA postseason event.

Later that week, the Eagles competed in the Women's National Golf Invitational, with Angelica Holman taking home medalist honors. It was EMU's first postseason tournament as a team, finishing second.

Now, they're three rounds away from making the NCAA Championship for the first time.

"I'm just lucky enough to be called the head coach," Brewer said. "But it's those individuals that helped us turn this into something special in only two years."

EMU's turnaround started with the investment from GameAbove, which gifted $8 million to the university for an $8 million, on-campus golf facility that opened in January 2024. The 13,000-square-foot space instantly became one of the best in the country, let alone for a mid-major program.