Steve Mato enters his sixth season as the men's golf coach at Madonna University in 2011. He became just the second coach in the brief history of the Madonna University men's golf program prior to the 2006-07 season.
Mato has built the Crusaders into both conference and national contenders as evidenced by the squad's 2009 and 2010 Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference championships and Brett Quitiquit's 2010 National Runner-Up finish at the NAIA National Championships.
In his five seasons, Mato has led MU to a pair of WHAC regular season championships and has had one golfer – Quitiquit – win the WHAC individual title. In addition, in each of Mato's previous five seasons, the Crusaders have captured at least one tournament title.
Mato's fellow coaches named him the 2009 WHAC Men's Golf Coach of the Year after his squad won the program's first league title.
In his first season with the men's golf team at Madonna, Mato quickly established the program as a contender at the conference level after finishing second in the overall WHAC standings. The Crusaders finished just nine points behind eventual conference champion Davenport following a six-event season. Mato also guided the Crusaders to their first ever team tournament title after MU won the fifth WHAC Jamboree of the fall 2006 season.
Mato came to Madonna from Franklin High School (Livonia, Michigan) where he has served as men's varsity coach for 14 seasons. In his time at Franklin, Mato mentored several scholarship and mini-tour players and was named the Coach of the Year in 2006.
"We are pleased to have coach Mato as a member of the Madonna staff," said Rizzo. "He has a wealth of coaching experience and will be the right man to take our program to the next phase of development. I feel very fortunate to get someone with his credentials."
Mato, who holds a master's degree in Education and is a Special Education teacher in the Livonia Public Schools system has also spent the past 31 years as the Director of Golf at Fellows Creek Golf Club in Canton.
Mato, and his wife Deborah have two children; Melissa and Michael and reside in Livonia.
