Multi-Sport Career at TC West Helps Gillis Thrive as Pro in Game She Once Left Behind
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
July 9, 2026
When Gaby (Muller) Gillis walked away from golf her sophomore at Traverse City West High School, she had no idea she would sprint back to the sport.
Especially since her walk quickly turned to a stumble thanks to a torn ACL suffered during basketball practice a few months after giving up the fairway.
“I think everything happens for a reason,” said Gillis, a three-sport star at West and now the first female head golf pro at the John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla. “It’s a silver lining — it’s what got me back into golf. A few months after my surgery, all I could do was chip and put. I had to try to do something.”
When Gillis was a freshman in high school, girls golf was a spring sport, girls volleyball was a winter sport and girls basketball was a fall sport. Girls golf and volleyball became fall sports her sophomore year. After consultation with her coaches and her parents, Gillis chose volleyball, then her favorite sport, over golf.
Gillis did play golf and volleyball in the same season her junior and senior years, balancing academics and competing in two sports simultaneously. She practiced golf mostly on her own, following volleyball team practices.
“I wouldn't change anything,” Gillis said. “School was important to me as well, but I was very lucky with the opportunities that I had. Those fall seasons, junior and senior year were pretty hectic. I had a lot of support from the coaches and my teammates.”
After leaving West, Gillis went on to play golf for Michigan State University and become a golf pro. Before her ACL injury, she was seriously entertaining thoughts of playing volleyball at the next level.
“A lot of the elite athletes were playing club throughout high school, and I just couldn't do that because I was playing my other sports,” Gillis recalled. “So could that have affected maybe my volleyball career? I don't know if volleyball would have taken me to where I am now.”
Gillis, who credits much of her success to her parents encouraging her to play multiple sports, points to high school athletics as key to functioning as a golf pro today and managing two golf courses and a staff of 30. She is one of two head golf pros at John’s Island. The other is her husband, Tim Gillis.
“High school sports taught me a ton,” Gillis acknowledged. “High school sports teaches kids discipline, time management and how to work with others. When you're on a team and also for individual sports, you learn how to handle things and experience the highs and lows and trying to figure something out on your own.”
She recommends today’s student-athlete avoid focusing on just one sport.
“I do a lot of recruiting and hiring in my job now,” she added. “I ask them about their golf experience but I also ask if they grew up playing any other sports. I think high school sports can teach someone so much. A lot of the people that I hire have played high school sports.”
Gillis graduated from West in 2010. She was an all-state golfer for the Titans and selected to the all-Big North Conference first teams in basketball, volleyball and golf. During her junior year, she eagled two holes during the same round.
She went on to play for Big Ten championship teams at MSU. Her younger brother, Gage, joined her at Michigan State and played for the Spartans, too.
“I grew up a very passionate Michigan State fan and had the opportunity to play golf there,” Gillis said. “Even though golf is an individual sport, it still had that team aspect at the college level and I'm still extremely close with some of my teammates. Golf added the family aspect, which I think is so important.”
Gillis has been around golf much of her life. Her father, Fred Muller, was the head golf professional at Crystal Downs Country Club in Frankfort for 42 years. He died a little over a year ago. Gillis recalls vividly playing at Crystal Down as young as 5 years of age,
Gillis pointed out she couldn’t imagine doing any other kind of work today.
“Growing up, I watched my dad work at the golf course, caddying, working in the bathroom and the golf shop,” Gillis said. “I played at a high level in high school and college, but I didn't really know that's what I wanted to do after graduating college.”
Gillis is ready to start her own family any day now. She and her husband are preparing to celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary in September, and they’re expecting the birth of their first child by the end of this month.
So golfing once again has been halted.
“We're expecting a little boy, which we're very excited about,” Gillis said. I hung up my clubs up a couple weeks ago, but I actually played really well in my last round.”
She was under par going into the 18th hole and three-putted to finish even.
“But I gave all those men a run for their money,” she noted. “My body is not quite moving how I would like it, so I hung them up on a high note.”
The soon-to-be-new parents are planning to raise their son in sports similar to Gaby’s experiences at West and MSU.
“I feel like that was important that our parents didn't limit us to just one sport,” Gillis said. “When you're on a team learning how to work with people, you're working with people to try to be as successful as possible and win. And with individual sports, you're trying to find success as well. It translates to the real world.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Gaby (Muller) Gillis poses for a photo with her Traverse City West coach Cathy Coon during her senior season in 2009. At right, Gillis now serves as a golf pro at John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla. (2) Gillis stands for a photo with her husband Tim, who also serves as a pro at John’s Island. (3) Gillis, right, blocks a kill attempt for West’s volleyball team. (4) Gillis posts scores during an event. (Photos provided by Gaby Gillis.)
Portage Northern's Leinwand Driving to Contend Again, Lead Huskies' Rise
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
August 23, 2022
PORTAGE — When she was 4 years old, KT Leinwand’s parents joined the Kalamazoo Country Club, she said, to give their children something to do during the summer months.
Special events for children included “fun things around the (golf) course with little kids and little putt-putt matches,” Leinwand recalled this week. “They just wanted to keep me busy.”
Little did she realize that those “fun things” would lead to a passion for golf that has catapulted Leinwand into becoming one of the top high school golfers in the state.
Last fall, as a Portage Northern sophomore, she finished second at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Final.
What is more unusual is that no one in her family — her parents, three siblings or grandparents — plays golf.
By age 8, she was learning the finer points of the sport by attending clinics.
“I would come and play with my friends,” Leinwand said. “We met (KCC assistant pro at the time, now head pro) Kyle Horton, and I decided I wanted private lessons with him when I was 9.
“Kyle gave me the love of golf, and then I kept going. Then I went with another coach, Abby Pearson, and she made me love it even more. I just kept getting out there every day and playing. Been with her ever since.”
Leinwand, who turned 16 two weeks ago, is the top golfer for the Huskies.
“We have obviously a really good No. 1 golfer in KT, which offsets a lot of scoring because she’s consistently in the low- to mid-70s,” Portage Northern coach Chris Andrews said. “So that gives us a little bit of a buffer for our fourth and fifth golfers.
“This year, we really have a good No. 2 and 3 golfer. We have a handful of girls trying to get us that fourth score we need. I’m looking at if we can get 100 or less out of that fourth scorer, we could be a state qualifier.”
The No. 2 golfer is senior Zoey Quinn.
“She’s gotten to the point where she’s actually a really, really good softball player, but she’s switching her passion to golf and wants to play in college,” Andrews said. “She shoots in the 80s consistently.”
No. 3 is freshman Brooke Randall.
“She has had two good rounds so far,” Andrews said. “I see her scoring in the 80s consistently this year.
“If she gets out here the next couple weeks and plays more with KT and Zoey and just picks up some of the course management, she’s going to be a really, really good golfer as well.”
Others on the young varsity team are sophomores Lizzy Rzepka, Jenna Vliestra, Lauren Shaman and Addison Munn plus freshman Lilly Ray.
If the team does qualify for the MHSAA Finals, that would be a bonus for Leinwand, who was an individual qualifier the last two years.
Last fall, her two-day total of 148 at Bedford Valley in Battle Creek was just four strokes behind champ Gabriella Tapp of South Lyon.
If Leinwand qualifies again this year, “Gabriella will be a senior, and she’ll still be around so I’ll see her,” she laughed.
As a freshman, Leinwand finished 23rd individually in LPD2 at Michigan State’s Forest Akers West, the site of this year’s LPD2 Final.
Jumping from 23rd to second in a year took a lot of work and practice, she said.
“I worked in the winter a bunch at the Dome Sports Center in Schoolcraft. I was out there all the time working on my swing,” Leinwand said. “In the summer and spring when it was finally nice out with no snow, I was playing every day.”
With no others golfers in her family, Leinwand relies on her coach and friends to hit the links.
Sometimes she will go out by herself or join up with another group, which can cause some surprises.
“You don’t see a lot of young girls that good,” Andrews said, adding that Leinwand’s drives average 260 yards.
Andrews makes his point.
“I had a friend here and we played golf with my son,” he said. “KT joined us for one hole before she had to leave.
“My friend’s a scratch golfer. He was disappointed she left because he enjoyed watching her play. That’s a common reaction when people see her play.”
Leinwand credits her coach with helping her keep focus on the course.
Andrews teaches health, personal finance and International Baccalaureate sports exercise health science at Northern, and also is a mental performance trainer.
As the Huskies baseball coach, he credits mental performance as part of the success that propelled his 2019 team to the Division 1 championship.
He also works with other teams and individual athletes in the area.
“I use a lot of mental strategies from my coach,” Leinwand said. “After a bad shot, I have to erase it and go to the next shot and totally clean slate and totally forget about that bad shot.”
However, her strength is her power off the tee, she said.
“I can hit it a good amount farther than a lot of the girls. When we’re playing short courses, I don’t always need to hit my driver off the tee, so I hit something like an iron or a wood that can be more consistent and straighter.”
Andrews looks to his junior as a role model for others on the team.
“KT brings a quiet confidence that I think the other girls can look at her and not just admire her physical ability, but her presence on the course and her presence around the course,” he said.
“She’s always in good spirits, and she doesn’t have too highs or too lows. She’s steady. Her mental game is probably her strength. She’s a good role model to the other girls to work hard and stay steady with the mental side.”
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Portage Northern’s KT Leinwand is aiming to take the next step after finishing runner-up in Lower Peninsula Division 2 last season. (Middle) Northern girls golf coach Chris Andrews also led the school’s baseball team to a Division 1 title in 2019. (Below) Leinwand awaits her turn to putt during practice. (Photos by Pam Shebest.)