St. Dominic Academy’s head coach Chris Whitney chats with team members at the start of practice in September at Fox Ridge Golf Club in Auburn. Whitney has been hired as Morse’s new golf coach. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal
The Morse varsity golf team had its best season in recent memory last year, and with the addition of Chris Whitney as head coach, the Shipbuilders are looking to build upon that success.
Whitney joins the Morse program after spending the past seven years at St. Dominic Academy. He will replace Mike Dutton, who retired in the fall after leading the Shipbuilders for seven years.
“We are very excited to welcome Chris to the Morse Shipbuilders coaching staff,” athletic director Andrew Pelletier wrote in a news release. “He will bring an upbeat personality and a new vision for our golf program. He is the perfect person to continue the recent success of the program and improve it going forward from the youth ages up to the high school.”
Last season, Morse won the KVAC B championship title and placed second in the Class B state championship.
Whitney’s teams have qualified for the state championship each of his 10 seasons of varsity coaching experience. That includes leading Cape Elizabeth to the 2015 and 2017 Class B titles and St. Dom’s to the 2023 Class C championship. At the Western Maine Conference championships, Whitney’s golfers won eight team titles (three at Cape, five at St. Dom’s) and seven individual titles (three at Cape, five at St. Dom’s).
“I look forward to not just developing our high school golfers, but building a junior golf program in the city of Bath that goes from the elementary students all the way to the high school program,” Whitney wrote in a statement. “Morse is a wonderful community with great support for all of the student-athletes. I cannot wait to get started and create a program that can compete for state championships each and every season.”
Whitney is reuniting with Pelletier, who was the athletic director at St. Dom’s during the 2022-23 school year.
St. Dom’s placed eighth as a team in last year’s Class C state championship. The Saints will not have a golf team next season because the high school is set to close at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.
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