Long Beach State University Athletics
William Poutre Selected As New Men's Golf Coach
5/2/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
May 2, 2008
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Long Beach State Director of Athletics Vic Cegles announced today that William Poutre has been selected as the new men's golf coach for the 49ers. Poutre has spent the past four years as the Head Men's Golf Coach at the University of Hartford. Poutre was selected to replace Bob Livingstone, who retired after serving 14 years as the 49ers head coach.
Poutre has turned Hartford into one of the strongest programs on the East Coast. He was been selected as the America East Conference Coach of the Year in 2006 and 2007 and he recently recruited a top class for the 2007 season at Hartford, including the No. 51 and No. 115 recruits in the Golfweek World Junior Rankings.
"We are excited to have Bill and his family join us at The Beach," said Cegles. "He brings to the program head coaching experience and a passion for golf, student-athletes and winning championships."
This season the Hawks competed in the newly formed America Sky Golf Conference. Poutre was tabbed as the America Sky Coach of the Year and senior A.J. Oleksak was the league's Player of the Year. The conference does not host a season-ending conference tournament.
Poutre also signed a top recruiting class in 2006 and helped lead the Hawks to back-to-back America East Conference championships (2006, 2007). Last season the Hawks advanced to the NCAA Division I East Regionals for the first time in school history. Hartford increased its District I ranking from No. 11 to No. 1, while their national ranking went from No. 261 to No. 143 this season.
Hartford won the 2007 Yale Spring Opener, the 2007 Old Dominion Seascape Invitational and the 2006 Purple and Red Invitational in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Poutre was able to establish, coordinate and host the school's first home golf tournament in the past 18 years, and he built the tournament into the strongest Division I golf tournaments in the Northeast within three years. The Hawks Invitational is one of the premier tournaments in the Northeast and was held at The International in Bolton, Massachusetts this past September.
Over the past several years Poutre has traveled the country as the lead educator for the NCAA-sponsored "Playbook For Life" program. The program was developed by The Hartford to teach NCAA student-athletes the basics of personal finance.
From 2000-04 Poutre was the Chief Executive Office for Prime Financial, Inc., after serving as the Executive Vice President of Business Development for the previous four years.
Poutre is a 1988 graduate from the University of Hartford with a degree in Business Administration. He was a letterwinner on the Hawks men's golf team and is currently working on his MBA. Poutre also is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management. He is a class "A" member of the Professional Golfers' Association of America, an active member of the College Golf Coaches Association of America and is a voting member of the NCAA Division I Golf Coaches Poll.
