CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
- Two NCAA Division I Championships – Individual Bids to Regionals (Evan Russell – 2014 At-Large Bid; 2016 Big Sky Automatic Bid)
- Two New England Division I Individual Champions (Matt Smith – 2011-12; Maki Kobayashi – 2009-10)
- Big Sky Conference Individual Champion (Russell – 2015-16)
- America Sky Conference Individual Conference Champion (Brian Albertazzi – 2008-09)
- Two-time New England Division I Golf Association Team of the Year (2013-14, 2014-15)
- Two-time New England Division I Golf Association Coach of the Year (2013-14, 2014-15)
- New England DI Golf Association Player of the Year (Russell – 2013-14)
- Five student-athletes have qualified for seven US Amateur Championships
- 12 GCAA All-American Academic Team awards
- Four-time GCAA President’s Special Recognition for Academics (2015-16, 2016-17, 2022-23, 2023-24)
- 29 GCAA All-America Scholars
- One America Sky Player of the Year (Russell – 2013-14)
- One America Sky Newcomer of the Year (Russell – 2012-13)
- Seven Big Sky Scholar-Athlete honorees
- 13 All-Conference Team members, including two from the Conference of New England, three America Sky honorees and eight Big Sky selections.
- 22 Big Sky Golfer of the Week honorees
- 11 All-New England DI Team members
- 18 America Sky All-Academic and 52 Big Sky All-Academic Team selections
- Nine Ping All-Northeast Regional Selections
- Five State Amateur Champions and one New England Amateur Champion
CAREER BIOGRAPHY
Pete Stankevich, a two-time New England Division I Golf Association Coach of the Year, enters his 18th year as head coach of the Hartford men’s golf team in 2025-26. A University of Hartford graduate who was a standout member of the Hawks’ golf team, Stankevich has also served as head coach of his alma mater’s women’s golf team for each of the past 11 seasons.
Stankevich — a Connecticut native and familiar face on the local golf circuit — has played an instrumental role in the long run of success of the men’s golf program at Hartford, first as a student-athlete and now as a coach.
In 17 years at the helm, Stankevich has piloted Hartford to 16 team tournament titles, including 4 in 2023-24 and three in a 2020-21 season that was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Individually, he has piloted a pair of Hawks to bids to the NCAA Regional Tournament while combining for 16 tournament medalists — including a pair of Conference Tournament Champions — to go along with nine Ping All-Northeast Regional selections, 13 All-New England Division I Team members, two major conference award winners (Newcomer of the Year, Player of the Year) and
11 All-Conference Team selections.
Recently taking home three team titles in an abbreviated 2020-21 campaign that featured just eight tournaments, Stankevich’s Hawks posted the fifth-lowest team scoring average in program history with a 296.27 mark. In addition, recent graduate Matthew Schwab — who closed out his career with the third-best career stroke average in program history — averaged 72.87 strokes per round this past season, which is the fourth lowest mark recorded by a Hartford golfer.
Hartford’s record book has been completely rewritten since Stankevich returned to his alma mater as the seventh head coach in program history in 2008.
Eight of his squads have landed single-season scoring averages that rank among the top-10 in Hartford’s rich program history — including a program-record mark of 292.52 in 2013-14. That season, Stankevich guided the Hawks to a New England Division I Championship, which led to the first of two-straight New England Division I Golf Association Team of the Year awards.
Stankevich also received back-to-back Coach of the Year accolades from the New England Division I Golf Association at the conclusion of those two seasons in 2014 and 2015.
Under Stankevich, Hartford has been a consistent contender within the competitive Big Sky Conference. Since joining the league for the 2014-15 campaign, he has piloted the Hawks to top-half finishes on the leaderboard of the Big Sky Tournament three times, including a third-place in 2019.
Individually, Stankevich has landed 22 Big Sky Golfer of the Week selections and eight Big Sky All-Conference Team selections, including recent graduate student Ryan Tomaso and Schwab, who took home the honor in 2020 and 2021, respectively. In addition, he has piloted a pair of student-athletes to top-two finishes at the Big Sky Championship. In 2017, recent graduate Elias Gross earned runner-up honors after coming one stroke shy of taking home top-billing, while in the previous year, Evan Russell (’16) was named the Big Sky Individual Champion.
In fact, a number of Hartford golfers have experienced individual success during Stankevich’s tenure, as his student-athletes have produced nine of the program’s top-10 career scoring averages. With his guidance, Russell enjoyed one of the most brilliant careers in Hawks men’s golf lore, shattering Hartford’s individual record by calculating a 72.47 stroke average over his four seasons with the program (2013-16).
Eight of the program’s top-10 individual single-season scoring averages have also come under Stankevich. Highlighting that list is Russell, who shattered the school record with a 70.56 stroke average over the 2013-14 campaign.
Russell also made history with Stankevich’s guidance in 2016 when he became the first Hartford golfer to earn a pair of NCAA Regional appearances during his career. In 2014, he landed the program’s first individual NCAA berth since 2007 by receiving an at-large bid, while two years later, he claimed the Big Sky’s Automatic Bid to the NCAA Regional’s after capturing the conference tournament’s individual title.
Off the links, the Hawks have had just as much success inside of the classroom with Stankevich at the helm. In 2022-23, men’s golf combined for an impressive 3.58 GPA, which led to 8 golfers earning Big Sky All-Academic Team honors. This past academic year, men’s golf achieved a 3.64 team GPA that earned the team President’s Special Recognition and Outstanding Academic Team honors from the Golf Coaches Association of America.
Through last season, 70 of Stankevich’s student-athletes have received All-Academic Team honors — including 18 with the America Sky and 52 with the Big Sky — while Hawks have combined to receive the prestigious Cleveland Golf/Srixon All-America Scholar award 29 times since Stankevich’s hiring.
In addition, Hartford has received the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) Outstanding Team Academic Award in 10 of the past 13 seasons, including six straight honors 2020-25. Highlighting that stretch are 4 GCAA President’s Recognition honors in 2016, 2017, 2023, and 2024, a prestigious honor that recognizes teams that post a GPA of 3.5 or higher.
Stankevich enjoyed an illustrious career as a student-athlete at Hartford. One of five team members to represent the Hawks at the 1988 NCAA Division I Championships, he contributed to several key victories for the team, including the New England Golf Championships and the NCAA Division I District 1 Championship.
He also made his mark on the 1987-88 squad, which was the only Hartford team to feature PGA Tour players Jerry Kelly, Tim Petrovic and Patrick Sheehan. During the NCAA Division I Championships in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Stankevich finished fifth in the NCAA Long Drive Championship.
After graduating from Hartford with a Bachelor of Science in business administration as an economics and finance major, Stankevich turned pro in 1989. During that time, he competed in tournaments while working as a golf professional at various clubs, including Bear Lakes Country Club (West Palm Beach Fla.), Wampanoag Country Club, Clinton Country Club, Glastonbury Hills Country Club and Elmridge Golf Course.
In 1993, Stankevich was elected to PGA Membership as a Class A member. Born in Hartford and raised in Wethersfield, Conn., he returned to the University of Hartford where he earned a Master of Arts in economics in September 1995, writing a thesis titled “The Economics of Golf Course Development.”
Two years after he received his Masters Degree, Stankevich was brought on as a teaching professional for Golf Quest Family Sports Center in Brookfield, Conn. Shortly thereafter, he was named the Head Golf Professional and Director of Instruction. From 1997 to 2023, he helped build Golf Quest Academy into one of the top golf academies in the Northeast, seeing it voted in the top-100 driving ranges/practice facilities in the nation almost annually by
Golf Range Magazine.
In addition,
CTGolfer.com has named Stankevich one the state’s top-three instructors on numerous occasions. He has brought that skill set and work ethic back to his alma mater.
Stankevich has been a member of several committees within the college golf community. Serving as a Division I All-America Committee Member from 2014 to 2019, he was chairman of the committee in 2019-20. Stankevich was also been the Northeast Region Chairman for the Division I All-America Committee since 2014.
Stankevich was also pn the Arnold Palmer Cup Selection Committee, which selected the United States collegiate team that competed against Europe at the event. He previously served as a committee member in 2019 before continuing his involvement as committee chairman in 2020.
In 2015, Stankevich joined the Jack Nicklaus Award Committee where he served as a committee member before becoming the committee's chairman the following year. He then joined the Ben Hogan Award Committee for two years, serving as a committee member and a committee chairman in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Stankevich, who competed at Wethersfield High School for the legendary coach Rod Cyr, was inducted into the Wethersfield High School Athletic Hall of Fame alongside his former coach in October 2010. In addition, Stankevich achieved PGA Life Member status in 2013, and was named a member of the PGA Quarter Century Club in 2018.
Stankevich currently resides in Woodbury, Conn., with his wife, Leslie, and their two sons, Durkin and Declan.
