The team was gathered with alumni on the patio of the Jigger Inn, the famous pub perched over the 17th hole at the Old Course at St. Andrews, when someone spotted Griffin Carteaux ’29 coming up the fairway. Within seconds, teammates were vaulting the short stone wall on the edge of the course, running out to walk him in.
“They all came and surrounded me and then followed me up 17 and 18. It was one of the coolest moments of my life, having all the guys around me for that,” Carteaux said. “You’re walking the same grounds as some of the most famous players around the world—Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Arnold Palmer. It’s just a surreal moment to be with such a special group of guys and alumni who gave so much to people they barely knew before the trip. It just shows you the generosity of the Wabash culture.”
The collision of past and present, students and alumni, sport and history, defined the Wabash golf team’s trip to Scotland this summer—a week built around their sport’s birthplace, and experienced with the alumni who fundraised to make the travel possible.
Among the alumni on the trip were Mike ’87 and Cindy Rapier, whose connection to the Wabash golf program stretches back decades. While Mike didn’t play golf at Wabash—he was a football player—he and his wife have become two of the program’s most consistent supporters, sponsoring rounds and dinners for the team’s spring break trips long before Scotland was ever on the itinerary.
Head coach Justin Kopp ’21 met the Rapiers as a student on one such spring break in Arizona.
“Mike and Cindy’s generosity left an impression on me,” Kopp said. “They were eager to give back to the College and to host us. We’re so grateful for everything they’ve done and continue to do for our program, so traveling with them now as the coach and seeing that same impression made on our current students was a full-circle moment.”
In Scotland, the team played six rounds of 18 holes in six days, explored the R&A World Golf Museum, and spent evenings with alumni at pubs across St. Andrews.
“It was a golfer’s dream, being in the birthplace of the sport and the R&A, which is like the U.S.’s PGA, but they set the global standard for golf rules and regulations,” Kopp said.
For Carteaux, the trip strengthened his bond with the team.
“Golf is such an individual sport,” he said. “College golf is a little different because your score counts as a team, but you don’t spend a lot of time together on the course. We made so many memories together in Scotland that I’ll remember 10, 20 years down the line.”
Rapier, a Trustee of the College, spent the week as an enthusiastic playing partner.
“I got to play a round with Coen Bauscheck ’28 and he made the best bogey I’ve ever seen,” Rapier said, still laughing at the memory. “He hits it onto the fairway, onto the fairway again, then onto a gravel road. Then off the gravel road, he hits it to a foot from the hole for a tap-in. Most golfers would have made that an eight or nine.
“But it’s not all about golf,” Rapier continued. “One of the reasons Cindy and I have stayed involved with the golf team for so many years, almost 30 years, is the quality of young men who come on these trips. They’re always super polite, competitive, and want to have fun, but they’re also young men of high character. It’s always a pleasure when the day is over.”
Cindy felt it too. “Having two boys of my own in that age group, it’s always nice being able to make those connections with other young guys on the team,” she said. “They’ve always been really great.”
Steve Hoffman ’85, a gift officer at the College who helped organize the trip’s funding and alumni involvement, believes golf is uniquely suited for this kind of shared student-alumni playing experience.
“Golf might be the only sport where this works perfectly,” Hoffman said. “You can go out and golf with someone at any level. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. You can just have fun playing because you’re playing together on the same hole, in the same direction.”
The relationships built on the course carried into dinner conversations, where alumni—among them two doctors, a lawyer, and an entrepreneur—found themselves fielding questions about life after Wabash.
“Mostly the alumni want to know about the students and what they want to do,” Hoffman said. “Whatever the students were interested in, the alumni would help talk them through it, give them advice. Have you thought about grad school? I’m sure a lot of them stayed in touch.”
Rapier felt the same pull from the other side of the conversation.
“They were very curious about what we did after we left Wabash, and what path we took,” he said. “I think that curiosity, and that kind of commitment to continue learning, is healthy and not unlike past graduates of Wabash. That’s one of the things that ties Wabash graduates together along with the common experience of being at a really unique place.”
At the trip’s final dinner, Alex Schenkel ’26 stood and thanked the alumni and guests on behalf of the team, a small gesture that captured just how much a week spent in the birthplace of their sport alongside alumni and their spouses meant to the team.
“Not only having alumni along on the trip and playing with the team but also helping us supplement the cost for the students, was pretty special,” Hoffman said. “They felt good about seeing where their money was going, and the students were able to see personally who was helping them make the trip possible financially.”
The golf team’s trip won’t be the last of its kind. The football team will travel to Italy next May on a similarly alumni-funded trip.
“We have alumni who want to make experiences like these financially feasible for every student who wants to go,” Hoffman said.