Arizona Wildcats hire Texas A&M assistant coach Giovana Maymon to lead women's golf program

An Arizona women’s golf program with a history that includes multiple national championships has found a new head coach with her own national title connections.

The UA announced Monday the hiring of recent Texas A&M assistant coach Giovana Maymon as the Wildcats’ next head coach. She replaces Laura Ianello, a national championship winner at the UA as a player and a coach. Ianello left Tucson earlier this month to take the same role at the University of Texas.

Just last month, Maymon helped the No. 3 national seed Aggies finish third out of 30 teams in stroke play at the 2024 NCAA Women’s Golf Championships, with Texas A&M one of the final eight teams standing. Even more notably, Aggie junior Adela Cernousek raised the trophy as the women’s individual NCAA champion.

“We had the privilege of speaking with an impressive group of candidates during this search process, but it became clear that Giovana embodies everything we sought in our next women’s golf coach,” UA athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois said in a press release.

“She is an outstanding leader, a relentless recruiter and a proven winner as a coach and student-athlete,” Reed-Francois added.

Maymon, originally from Huixquilucan, Mexico, played collegiately at Baylor from 2014-18. She was a key contributor to the Bears’ national runner-up finish as a team in 2015 (Arizona went as far as the round of eight itself that season, falling to eventual champion Stanford).

Her NCAA Division I coaching career began at South Alabama in 2019, where Maymon served as a graduate assistant for two seasons. When current Texas A&M coach Gerrod Chadwell was hired away from the University of Houston in 2021, he brought in Maymon as an assistant coach; the Aggies have reached women’s college golf’s equivalent of the “Elite Eight” during each of the duo’s seasons in College Station, Texas.

“It is an honor to lead a historically great program like Arizona, and I want to thank Desireé and her team for the opportunity and trust they have in me as a leader,” Maymon, a three-time Women’s Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholar during her playing days at Baylor, said in the UA-issued release that she “will work every day to repay that faith and make the University of Arizona proud.”

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Maymon said via the press release that, while she was growing up in Mexico, UA and LPGA Tour great and World Golf Hall of Famer “Lorena Ochoa was my hero and mentor who embodied the legacy of Arizona women’s golf. To become head coach of her college program with its rich history and tradition of success, is a dream come true!”

Maymon’s takeover in Tucson comes as a sort of Texas trade-off in the UA head coach’s office. Two weeks to the day after Ianello left after her 14th year as Arizona’s head coach to take over the program at Texas, Maymon heads to Southern Arizona after her three-year stint as an assistant with UT rival A&M.

“Throughout a competitive search process, coach Maymon stood out as the dynamic leader we were looking for,” Reed-Francois said in an email Monday sent to Wildcat supporters and donors.

Under Ianello’s leadership, Arizona made NCAA Regional appearances, or better, 13 consecutive times, advancing to the NCAA Championships nine times and winning the NCAA title in 2018 and a Pac-12 crown in 2015.

Barring any potential transfer portal movement, Maymon’s first UA roster in 2024-25 would include senior-to-be Carolina Melgrati, an All-Pac-12 honoree this past season. Also set to return for the Wildcats would be juniors-to-be Nena Wongthanavimok, who reached All-Pac-12 honorable mention status this past Spring, and Julia Misemer, who played her way into the fields of the last two U.S. Women’s Open tournaments in Summer 2023 and Summer 2024.

Maymon’s first year at the helm in Tucson also coincides with the official inaugural season of the Wildcats, three times the NCAA women’s golf national champion, training at their new everyday home facility, the $14.8 million William M. “Bill” Clements Golf Center at Tucson Country Club.

Reed-Francois, Ianello, UA men’s coach Jim Anderson, players from both the men’s and women’s teams and other university and local dignitaries were on hand at TCC April 18 for the unveiling of the long-awaited facility, which includes the Peter and Nancy Salter Short Game Area, the Furyk Golf Lab featuring, per the UA athletics website, “state-of-the-art projection Putt View technology,” new locker rooms, coaching offices and training areas. At the main entrance to the facility: the Championship Room, which “displays the rich tradition of both programs that includes four national championships, 21 conference championships, 129 All-Americans” and other athletic and academic honors.