Bio

Liza Ruetten is in her seventh season as the head women’s golf coach at UW-Oshkosh.

Ruetten has guided UW-Oshkosh to a top-three finish at each of the past four WIAC Championships, including the 2015 event where the Titans captured the league title to qualify for the 2016 NCAA Division III Championship. Ruetten has helped five Titans receive a total of 13 All-WIAC citations, including two WIAC Players of the Year, and two players to NCAA DIvision III All-Central Region honors.

Last season, Ruetten and the Titans placed third at the WIAC Championship and produced three All-WIAC selections.

In 2016-17, UW-Oshkosh finished second to UW-Stout by five strokes at the WIAC Championship while winning its own season-opening tournament for the second straight year. The Titans also placed second at a pair of invitationals hosted by UW-Stevens Point and UW-Whitewater. UW-Oshkosh had four All-WIAC selections during the 2016-17 season, including Kayla Priebe who was named the league's Player of the Year. Priebe became the second consecutive Titan and third player in program history to claim the WIAC Player of the Year award.

During the 2015-16 season, Ruetten coached UW-Oshkosh to its first WIAC title and NCAA postseason appearance since the 2003-04 campaign. Paced by WIAC Player of the Year and All-Central Region selection McKenzie Paul, the Titans finished 14th out of the 21 teams that attended that season's national championship at the Bay Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas. Paul also garnered All-Central Region honors.

Prior to winning the 2015 WIAC championship, Ruetten coached the Titans to league finishes of seventh in 2012, fourth in 2013 and third in 2014.

In the classroom, Ruetten's 2016-17 team compiled a 3.22 cumulative grade point average. The Titans had five student-athletes named to the WIAC Scholastic Honor Roll, including Priebe who was selected as an All-American Scholar by the Women's Golf Coaches Association for the second straight year.

Ruetten is the fourth head coach in the 21-year history of the UW-Oshkosh women’s golf program. She has been playing competitive golf for nearly four decades and in 2014 won the First Flight of the Wisconsin Women’s State Golf Association (WWSGA) Match Play Tournament. Ruetten also took first place in the First Flight of the 2014 WWSGA Stroke Play Tournament.

Ruetten won the Oshkosh City Championship in 1998 and 2015 and the Northeastern Wisconsin Golf Association Amateur Championship in 2007. She also took first place in the WWSGA’s Mother-Daughter Championship three times and the WWSGA’s Mother-Son Championship once.

Ruetten was a member of Neenah's Ridgeway Country Club for nearly 20 years. She spent five of those years assisting the golf professional staff in club tournament organization and youth instruction.

Ruetten, who played on the boys golf team while attending Winneconne High School, was a teacher in the Neenah Joint School District from 2000-16. In 2011, she was named Neenah's Middle School Teacher of the Year for her work as a sixth-grade science teacher and team leader of the Phoenix House at Horace Mann Middle School.

In addition to her coaching duties, Ruetten also serves as a member of the UW-Oshkosh Athletics Department's Corporate Partnership Development Team.

Ruetten, a 1988 UW-Oshkosh graduate, resides in Winneconne with her husband, Chris, also a UW-Oshkosh graduate. Ruetten's son, Justin, graduated from UW-Oshkosh in 2014.

(8/1/2018)