Heather Schapals is the GCSAA Class A superintendent at Deerpath Golf Course in Lake Forest, Ill. This week, though, she's part of the volunteer crew at the U.S. Women's Open at Erin Hills Golf Course. Photo by Andrew Hartsock
Heather Schapals has had a whirlwind 2025.
After having started a new job in January as the GCSAA Class A superintendent at The Club at Las Campanas in Santa Fe, N.M., after two years in the same role at Seascape Golf Course in Aptos, Calif., Schapals moved back closer to home this month to be nearer to family and to help care for her mother.
After fulfilling her duties at Las Campanas, she and her equipment manager husband, Mike (a five-year association member), loaded up the moving truck and drove the 1,300 miles from Santa Fe to Racine, Wis. They arrived on Tuesday, May 20.
Schapals, an 11-year association member, had just enough time to unload the truck, take a deep breath, then report for volunteer duty Monday at Erin Hills Golf Course in Erin, Wis., where the U.S. Women’s Open takes place Thursday through Sunday. After putting in countless grueling hours at Erin Hills, Schapals will report for her first day of work as superintendent at Deerpath Golf Course in Lake Forest, Ill., on Monday.
“It was necessary,” Schapals says of her move back home. “I’ve been gone eight years.”
That she’s at the USWO in her old (and now new) back yard was just a “happy coincidence.”
Schapals was on the nearly all-female maintenance crew at the 2023 USWO at Pebble Beach Golf Links, and when she heard Erin Hills was hosting the 2025 edition, she jumped at the chance to return.
“I wanted to come here and see the facility,” she says. “This is my first time on the property. I really like the rolling hills.”
Schapals is one of 32 women on the 85-person volunteer team at the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open. Of those 32, 26 are first-time participants in the tradition of bringing in predominantly women to fill out the USWO maintenance crew that dates to the 2021 event at The Olympic Club in San Francisco.
“They’re all so young,” says Schapals, who knew only a “handful” of the other female participants before they reported for duty. “They just keep getting younger. ‘Are you old enough to work?’”
But seriously, folks … Schapals has been in the industry for 25-plus years. She’s one of only five superintendents on the female USWO crew. The rest of the roster is made of assistant superintendents, assistants in training, an equipment manager, an equipment operator, a foreman, an intern, a student and a handful of industry reps — like Syngenta’s Kimberly Gard, the women in turf ringleader, and Lorabeth Catterson, an eight-year association member and former assistant superintendent who now is a digital platform specialist for Syngenta.
Schapals is thrilled to see all that new blood.
“I think it’s great,” she says. “There really weren’t a lot of women when I first started. I really didn’t notice at first, because my first experience was so positive. But it really was a male-dominated profession. But there are more and more women coming into the profession, and that’s exciting to me. I hope it helps them to see me in the position I’m in. It helps to be able to see somebody that looks like you and talks like you.”
Schapals has a relatively menial — albeit important — task this USWO week. She’s in charge of positioning the turning boards for greens mowers.
“I’ll do any job,” Schapals says with a laugh when it’s pointed out that’s not a normal day-to-day task for a superintendent with her experience. “I don’t care if it’s filling divots on the range. I’ll do anything. This is a vacation for me.”
Some vacation. Around the long — not to mention early, and late — hours at the USWO, Schapals is trying to get a head start on her new job at Deerpath, a municipal course in suburban Chicago. She brought her chemical-inventory sheet on her computer so she can begin to plan out her application plan.
“I’ll be ready to go Monday,” she says.
Andrew Hartsock is GCM’s editor-in-chief.