FARMINGTON, Utah (May 2, 2025) -- For those unfamiliar, the butterfly effect is the idea that a small action can eventually, over time, lead to large and unpredictable outcomes.
In the context of Sneha Sharan’s story, that small action is a Direct Message on Instagram from Sacramento State head women’s golf coach David Sutherland.
“I tried the formal way of emailing and everything, but I guess these days it’s different,” Sharan said.
Well, what about the outcome? Oh, just back-to-back Big Sky Conference Women’s Golf Player of the Year titles and a run of dominance for the Hornets.
“I actually jumped on the whole college golf train really late. I didn’t start getting recruited until my senior year and that’s when COVID had just hit in 2020,” Sharan said. “I reached out to a lot of schools and a lot of them said that they didn’t want to recruit internationally because they didn’t know what was going on with the pandemic. So, I was very ready to take a gap year, but at the end of April coach [Sutherland] reached out to me on Instagram and said he would have a spot.”
Sharan is a senior from Bengaluru, India, where her golfing journey didn’t start until she was 15 years old.
“I was playing badminton way before I started playing golf, and I was taking it very seriously,” she said.
While at a Christmas party with her mom’s business partner, she had the opportunity to play golf for the first time and immediately fell in love with the game.
“I went home that day and told my mom she needed to sign me up for classes,” Sharan noted.
Fast forward just a few years and Sharan was leaving her home country to move to America and begin her college golf journey in the Golden State.
“It was a big change. It was my first time in California. I had been to Florida and the East Coast a little bit when I was a baby, so it was a big change, but a good change,” she said.
As a freshman in 2021-22, Sharan saw quite a bit of action for the Hornets. Across 29 rounds, she averaged a score of 76.79 and was named Third Team All-Big Sky following her first collegiate season.
As she transitioned into her sophomore year, however, things changed.
Sharan was moved out of the lineup for Sacramento State and played as an individual in nine tournaments.
“My sophomore year was hard for me. I was very grateful for the opportunity that coach gave me, he took me to every single tournament without fail, but it was a little bit of rock bottom for me,” Sharan said.
While she was still involved heavily as a second-year player, she knew that she wanted her third collegiate season to be different.
“Heading into my junior year I knew there was no expectations. I had seen the worst of it just being on the sidelines. I never enjoyed it, but I was always grateful to support my team, I enjoyed doing that. But I felt the only way to go was up, and I started playing well and just took it one stroke at a time,” she said.
That being said, sometimes things are a matter of perspective. From her coach’s standpoint, Sharan’s second collegiate season was a time for growth.
“Her sophomore year was a really good year for her because she came to our college with talent and dedication, but because of COVID she had not played a lot of competitive golf,’’ Sutherland said. “She was able to play an entire year as an individual and work on the nuances of the game. She maintained a really good attitude and got better as the year went along.’’
That positive attitude went a long way, and to say she bounced back would be a massive understatement.
At the conclusion of her junior season in 2023-24, Sharan was named Big Sky Player of the Year and First Team All-Big Sky. She averaged a score of 73.15 in all 11 tournaments, which was the second-lowest single-season scoring average in Sacramento State history.
Her Player of the Year title did, however, halt a three-year run by teammate Jennifer Koga. From 2021-23, Koga earned three-consecutive Player of the Year titles. And while both Koga and Sharan had strong 2023-24 campaigns, Sneha won out for the Big Sky’s top prize.
“Jennifer is one of the closest friends I’ve had on the team over the years,” Sharan said. “It wasn’t even on my radar until after the season and I wasn’t even sure what my ranking was. So, when coach sent me a text to tell me congratulations it was a very pleasant surprise, and I was very grateful for it.”
When asked what it meant to win them back-to-back seasons, she humorously noted that it was nice to know the initial trophy was warranted.
“The first thing that came to my head was ‘it’s not a fluke’,” Sharan joked. “This past year I gave it my all and really enjoyed every single tournament, and that was the key difference was I enjoyed it. I didn’t look at it as work or something that was stressful. I went out and had fun everywhere we went, and I think that really translated into how my game improved.”
In total, Sacramento State has claimed six-consecutive Big Sky Player of the Year titles. Tess Blair took home the trophy in 2020, followed by three-straight for Koga and a pair for Sharan.
So, what’s led to that run of individual success?
“Coach would say ‘great coaching’ of course,” Sharan said jokingly. “I want to say that we have a really good team dynamic, everyone is always rooting for each other, and we’ve had that over the last few years. David and Cindy (Mah-Lyford) do a really good job of keeping us grounded. It’s easy to have a good finish and get up on a high horse, but they’re really good at keeping us from getting too ahead of ourselves.”
Sutherland coached all three golfers, and when asked if he was surprised by Sharan’s ability to go back-to-back, he was quick with definite response.
“The answer is no. I absolutely thought she had it in her,” Sutherland said. “She has always been as good of a driver of the ball as we’ve ever had, and she had the ability to play really hard courses. What she didn’t have is the feel parts of the game, and that goes back to not having a lot of tournament experience. If you were to isolate periods of time, around the end of her sophomore season is when she started to have the makings of a really good golfer, not just a really good college golfer. Now, she is just progressively getting better.”
That team dynamic continued to work at The Wigwam Golf Resort in the middle of April, as Sacramento State claimed its third-consecutive Big Sky title as a team. Unfortunately, Sharan was unable to participate in that event due to an injury.
Following the Big Sky Women’s Golf Championship, the Hornets hold the No. 53 spot in all of NCAA Division I women’s golf, putting them ahead of the likes of Miami (Fla.), BYU and Georgia.
Individually, Sharan is currently ranked as the No. 143 ranked golfer in all of Division I women’s golf.
The Hornets faced a really challenging non-conference campaign, that saw them go head-to-head with a lot of highly ranked teams and individuals. As a unit, they had two runner-up finishes in strongly contested tournaments.
Despite facing those types of challenges, Sharan emphasized that when you boil it all down, it’s just you against the grass.
“At the end of the day I can’t control what someone else does on the golf course, whether it’s my teammate or my competition,” she said. “So, when we played in bigger tournaments with stacked fields and highly ranked schools, they’re just fellow golfers like I am. You’re honestly playing the golf course.”
On May 11 at Superstition Mountain Golf and Country Club in Gold Canyon, Arizona, she’ll have another opportunity to play college golf as the Hornets participate in NCAA Regionals.
A journey that started because of an Instagram DM five years ago.