Kris Schoonover fell in love with golf, as many do, at a young age.
It was an idyllic introduction to the game: summer Fridays spent with her four siblings, sharing a few hand-me-down clubs and stretching $5 as far as it would go at nine-hole Bloomer Golf Course, just up the road from her hometown of Cornell in northwestern Wisconsin.
“In the summer, every day you had something – swimming, softball, all kinds of different things,” she said. “On Fridays there was nothing, so dad said, ‘Here’s a couple of clubs. All five of you get on the bus.’ We would go to Bloomer on a school bus. It was part of the [Cornell] rec program. No supervision other than the bus driver. Who would do that nowadays?
“We’d come back in the afternoon, happy as a clam.”
Golf wound up opening many doors for Schoonover. A fine player who wasn’t quite good enough to make it professionally, she instead channeled her passion and energy into multiple career paths off the course.
She has been, at various times (and occasionally overlapping), a successful college golf coach, director of the Golf Enterprise Management program and a tenured associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout and, since her retirement from UW-Stout in January, the director of operations and assistant competitions director at Erin Hills.
Schoonover has been at Erin Hills since the course opened in 2006 and for many years juggled her career as an educator, with summers spent at the course in a variety of roles: starter, ranger, player services, wherever she was needed. In the shoulder seasons, she often spent weekends at Erin Hills, awakening in the wee hours Monday to make the 240-mile drive back to Stout, in Menomonie, Wisconsin.
While gaining valuable operations experience, Schoonover also was a USGA committee member for all four national championships held at the public course (2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links, 2011 U.S. Amateur, 2017 U.S. Open, 2022 U.S. Mid-Amateur).
That breadth of experience made her the perfect candidate to replace Maggie Leef as general chair of the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open to be held at Erin Hills, after Leef stepped down for personal reasons.
“We’re so fortunate, because Kris has been here basically from the beginning, so she has been a part of every championship played here,” said John Morrissett, competitions director at Erin Hills. “She has great tournament experience first-hand at Erin Hills, and that’s invaluable. She has a very good working relationship with the USGA through all of that.
“It was a natural fit, given her time at Erin Hills and her passion for golf, for women’s golf and for Wisconsin golf.”
None of this would have happened had Schoonover chose a different path when faced with a career-defining decision in 2006.
She had started the women’s golf program at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1996 and led the team to a pair of conference titles and a fifth-place finish in the NCAA Division III tournament in 2003, when she was named Division III coach of the year.
She also was the assistant women’s basketball coach at UW-Oshkosh, which won the 1996 NCAA Division III national championship.
“When we started the golf program, I just took the most competitive people I knew, which was our basketball players,” Schoonover said. “They had just won the national title, and they were runners-up the year before. So, I had a couple of them, which helped instill that competitive drive.”
Schoonover gave up coaching golf in 2003, burned out by the dual responsibilities, but continued in her role as assistant basketball coach.
In 2006, she received an offer to be the assistant women’s basketball coach at UW-Milwaukee. At the same time, she learned UW-Stout was starting a Golf Enterprise Management program.
“I think with women’s golf and women’s athletics, it’s such a good time to be a part of it, whether it’s volunteering or mentoring or playing the game yourself.” — Kris Schoonover
It was time to make a choice.
“I was either going to stay in basketball or I was going to go to Stout,” she said. “And thank goodness I made the best decision, which was to stay in golf, because it has opened so many doors. It’s an area I can contribute to. I’m comfortable in that space.”
As general chair of the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open, Schoonover will be the face of the championship locally. She’ll work closely with Morrissett, the Erin Hills staff and the various committees and speak at schools and to local groups.
Most importantly, she hopes to be a role model for young women, opening their eyes to careers in golf.
“I think with women’s golf and women’s athletics, it’s such a good time to be a part of it, whether it’s volunteering or mentoring or playing the game yourself,” she said. “And so, I hope to bring that energy and say, ‘Anybody can do it in some capacity.’
“I’m excited and ready to go.”