Joselyn Kent

Today, Joselyn Kent is a co-assistant superintendent at the Duke University Golf Course. But it’s safe to say when she was growing up she had no thoughts about working in the turf industry.

She was just hoping to have a roof over her head.

A native of Villanueva, Honduras, Kent was born with a club foot. At the age of 2 months she was abandoned by her parents and found herself on the streets.

When she was not quite 7, she was rescued by the Rev. Linwood Cook, an American missionary who arranged for her to move to Danville, Virginia. He also arranged for necessary medical treatments. Kent eventually settled in the home of Mike and Mary Jo Kent, who adopted her — a process that took six and a half years to be finalized.

After finishing high school, Kent took a job at Home Depot, where she spent much of her time in the garden center; she’d always enjoyed working outdoors. Eventually she and her spouse moved to St. Augustine, Florida. Looking to make a career change, she quit her job with Home Depot.

Her career in turf was launched when she answered an ad for a seasonal opening on the crew at Palencia Golf Club and was hired by superintendent David Levin, despite the fact Kent had never worked on a golf course before.

“I was sooo slow” she recalls, “constantly in pain, too short for all the equipment. I felt weak again and I did not like it. I went back to the gym every day and worked on strengthening and conditioning towards my job.

“(Levin) helped in every way possible for me to operate the machines safely. I went from hating and fearing that I would lose my job to loving it and seeing a possible future in this.”

Appearing on the Wonderful Womenof Golf podcast with host Rick Woelfel, Kent talked about the impact Levin had on her life and career.

“He had women working at his past golf courses,” she says. “He knew how to work with a woman and empower her on the team. He just saw something in me.”

During her almost four years at Palencia, Kent advanced from a seasonal employee on the bunker crew to an assistant in training. After a short stay at TPC Sawgrass, she arrived at Duke last November.

Kent was part of the crew of female volunteers that worked the recent U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach.

“It was quite an experience just to see Pebble Beach itself,” she says. “The golf course is amazing. The pictures, the TV and stuff, just don’t do it any justice. The crew was fantastic, I loved learning from them. I was mowing the back nine fairways. The gentleman I was working with was so nice. He was teaching me about the sod and about the equipment.”

Besides spending an abundance of hours on the golf course at Pebble Beach, Kent also spent time attending various educational seminars.

“I was working from 4 o’clock in the morning to 11 o’clock at night,” she says, “but I still had classes in between about leadership, and how to help me communicate better and be a better mentor.

“I got to meet some amazing women who made it big in an industry.”

Among the people Kent got to meet during her week in California were pilots who participated in an all-female flyover at Pebble Beach on the Fourth of July to commemorate 50 years of women flying for the U.S. Navy.

“That was amazing,” she says. “Having them come meet us, thinking we were superstars and yet they were superstars. It was great. Women encouraging women.”

Unlike many of her professional peers, Kent has no desire to be a head superintendent. She has another goal in mind: building a golf course, perhaps in a third-world country, as a way of giving back.

“I want to go into malnutritioned places in the world,” she says, “and give them a garden, or golf courses, or anything to better their future.”