Chad Allen, the GCSAA Class A superintendent at The Club at Chatham Hills in Westfield, Ind., has been named the 2025 winner of GCSAA’s Emerging Leader Award. Photo by Ron Ball
Anybody who thinks that Chad Allen — now that he’s found his calling, now that he’s ascended to a head superintendent role and received his share of admiration and accolades — is going to put his career on cruise control and coast the rest of the way obviously doesn’t know Chad Allen.
“You can’t let your foot off the gas,” says Allen, GCSAA Class A superintendent at The Club at Chatham Hills in Westfield, Ind. “You have to make sure you’re still representing what you got the award for. You can’t always go 1,000 mph, myself included, but we’re the people driving this new generation of superintendents. We’re more progressive, more outgoing. And I think that’s great for our industry.
“We’ve got some people — my brother included, a 20-year (GCSAA) member — who, in the past, didn’t want to do what I call humble self-promotion, by taking public pride in what we’re doing and being able to step in front of people. There’s a value in acknowledging those people but also in letting us guys and gals get out there. I’m proud of the people who laid the groundwork before me, but I’m bringing a light to a profession that’s just a punching bag for a lot of people. I’m happy to be a face for that. We are a highly educated, motivated, driven group of people. We’re as serious as a heart surgeon, and we love what we do.”
A late bloomer who joined the industry just seven years ago, Allen, now 44, added to his résumé when he was named winner of GCSAA’s 2025 Emerging Leader Award.
The Emerging Leader Award, which is presented in partnership with John Deere, recognizes an individual who serves the industry as a superintendent with less than five years of experience or a student, associate member or assistant superintendent who displays continuous growth in service and leadership.
Allen, a six-year GCSAA member, certainly ticks all those boxes, despite — or, perhaps, because of — his late start.
“I fell in love with this industry,” Allen says. “I went from general laborer to now superintendent at one of the top private courses in the state of Indiana. It’s been fast, but that was by design. But it hasn’t been hard or taxing, because I love it. I love everything about it. I love the association. I love the local association. I love getting out every morning with the dog and walking the golf course and talking to people and solving problems and making relationships.”
Allen, his licensed clinical social worker wife, Crysty Huffman, and their 7-year-old daughter, Harper. Photos courtesy of Chad Allen
‘Completely untraditional’
Many golf course superintendents share a common origin story and path into the industry.
Some start mowing lawns, begin working at the local course, maybe play the game and fall for it, then start down a path that frequently goes: turf school, intern, assistant, superintendent.
Those last four steps often take years, if not decades.
In Allen’s case, all that came before is what took so long.
“My path was absolutely conventional,” says Brad Allen, CGCS, the forementioned brother and 21-year GCSAA member who is the director of agronomy and facilities at Hickory Stick Golf Club in Greenwood, Ind. “Chad’s was completely untraditional.”
Born into a family of farmers and just 1½ years younger than his big brother, Chad Allen dabbled in the golf course maintenance industry but showed no inclination of following his brother’s path into it.
“I followed the path less traveled,” Chad says. “But that’s not necessarily the best path.”
Out of high school, Allen originally wanted to go into the culinary arts — “I’m still a lights-out cook. Ask my wife,” he says — and that’s what he first pursued.
“But living that lifestyle,” he says, “didn’t allow me to focus on anything but myself. I was very irresponsible, not caring about others around me.”
Over the next decade and a half, he embarked on an aimless, whirlwind career path. He worked night shifts at a warehouse, cooked, carried bricks, installed vinyl decals on semis.
“It wasn’t uncommon for me to have four, five jobs a year,” says Allen, who estimates he worked as many as 40-plus jobs from high school until his first full-time professional job at 33. “It was a very paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. I lived a very self-centered, selfish lifestyle, and it didn’t reflect the way I was raised.”
Allen, left, and the crew at The Club at Chatham Hills.
‘I had to make amends’
The turning point came when Allen met his now wife, Crysty Huffman, almost a decade ago. Huffman is a licensed clinical social worker with “the heart of a servant,” Allen says.
They met online, on ChristianMingle, and even that could be viewed as serendipitous. Allen purchased a 30-day subscription to the service; they met on Day 29.
“It’s been love ever since,” Allen says. “It was meant to be, the way we found each other.”
Meeting her sparked something in Allen.
“I felt I had to make amends for things I’d done in my past,” he says. “I knew I had something to give back.”
So, he enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College, where he graduated with an associate degree in human services in 2015. He had interned for a nonprofit for individuals suffering from homelessness and substance-abuse issues and eventually was hired there full-time. Allen found the work rewarding at times, but excruciatingly taxing.
“It’s a hard field to work in,” he says. “Failures outnumber successes exponentially, and I felt myself drifting in a direction that wasn’t healthy for my family, my faith and myself.”
About the time of the birth of his daughter, Harper, Allen found himself burned out on his first career and unsure where to head next.
That’s where Brad came in.
“He was a godsend,” Chad says. “I worked on and off on golf courses before — odds and ends, mowing grass. Brad said, ‘Hey, man, why don’t you come out here and work until you find something you want to do?’ My wife said, ‘Why don’t you do that? You’re not headed down the right path.’ Now I’m not sure if she wants to shake his hand or kick him in the shins because of it.”
The Allen brothers — Brad, left, and Chad — flanking their mother, Shannon Stepancik.
A natural
As it turns out, the right path involved a cart path.
“He had worked for me prior to his career in the counseling field,” Brad says. “He had a knack for it. I knew right away. When he came back to turf, it just worked for him. It just fit.”
Chad compressed a career into the intervening seven years. He was an assistant at Harrison Lake Country Club in Columbus, Ind., from August 2016 to February 2021 (working for his brother until Brad left for The Links at Heartland Crossing in Cambry, Ind., in 2019). The first person in Indiana to complete GCSAA’s Assistant Superintendent Certificate Series, Chad collected his turf and turfgrass management certificate from Penn State University in December 2020, then landed at Chatham Hills as an assistant in 2021. In May 2022, Chad landed his first head superintendent job there at Chatham Hills. A graduate of the Syngenta Business Institute, Allen became a Class A superintendent earlier this year.
If Chatham Hills ends up being his last job, it sounds like he’d be OK with that.
“I’m so happy here,” Chad says. “I’ve got a great ownership group. If I can show a need, they work hard to get what we need. They support how active I am in the industry, and they respect my life on and off the golf course. I’m the definition of comfortable here.”
It sounds like the feeling is mutual. In part due to Allen’s constant, consistent communications with the entire club staff and the membership, there’s not an agronomic going-on that goes unannounced.
“Some of the cultural practices he brought to the club were more intensive in the big picture, but now, two years later, we’re really reaping the benefits of that,” says Brandon Snell, PGA, The Club at Chatham Hills’ director of golf. “It’s incredible. He’s an extremely intelligent person when it comes to that stuff. I mean, you want your superintendent to be a grass nerd, but he’s the kind of guy you want to sit down with and talk shop with.”
Communication, Allen says, is key. He’s clear when he’s about to carry out a certain cultural practice, for instance, and quick to follow up with results. And he brings receipts.
A huge proponent of data collection on the course (he added a G3 ball, the USGA’s data-collecting powerhouse, to his arsenal this season), Allen can show members before and after proof of how his methods are working.
“He’s the first person I text in the morning and the last one I text at night,” Snell says. “I communicate with him more than my fiancée, and it’s not forced. That’s the best part of it. I love what he’s done here, and the membership has fallen in love with him. That’s the biggest compliment, when membership comes to me or the ownership and says, ‘Do whatever you can to make sure Chad stays here forever.’”
A bird’s eye view of The Club at Chatham Hills. Photos by Ron Ball
A rapid rise
His rapid ascension through the ranks comes as anything but a surprise to his big brother.
“The only reason I say that is, I’m his brother,” Brad says. “When I talk to my fellow superintendents, they’re absolutely surprised and impressed how quickly he’s taken that bull by those horns. But I saw it early. I knew he’d be good.”
How?
“Leadership,” Brad says. “He’s just an individual who can work with groups or individuals and get them in the places they need to be. I could always rely on him to get a job done without much oversight. It was easy to see he had the skill set he needed to stay in this industry. At the beginning, I just let him do what he wanted and didn’t push him in any direction. But once he got interested in it, when he really got into it, he just took off.”
Chad is active at the chapter level (he’s currently secretary/treasurer of the Indiana GCSA) and beyond. A GCSAA grassroots ambassador, Allen is paired with Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), and he has represented superintendents in meetings with the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. And that’s just the start.
“I want to get more involved,” Allen says. “I want to get more involved at the community level. And I want to keep advocating for groups that don’t have a strong voice in this industry. I have an assistant right now who doesn’t have a lick of turfgrass education, but he’s as good as anybody else. There’s a lot of value in education, but I want him to have the same opportunities I’ve had.
“I want to get a First Green program out here. I’d love to get more engaged with high schools. We’re in the Farm Belt. The FFA convention is here every year. There’s a demographic out there that’s not tapped into enough. We need to be getting into high schools more so we can open up avenues for more superintendents.”
Allen cutting cups with his ever-present canine companion, Tug, the “most popular person on the golf course,” according to his human.Photos by Ron Ball
Active and identifiable on all the social media channels — Allen’s X moniker: @BentgrassWizard — Allen is also social savvy. Case in point: While some of his posts on some of the more targeted media might obviously be geared toward fellow turfheads, Allen is unusual in that he’s supremely active on LinkedIn. That’s by design.
“At the 2021 Green Start Academy, John Cunningham (Certified Golf Course Superintendent and GM/chief operating officer at Grandfather Golf and Country Club in Linville, N.C.) gave a presentation about being purposeful with what you do. Without purpose, you can’t get anywhere. I don’t use LinkedIn or Twitter (now X) for personal stuff. It’s what I use for business.
“And I think there’s a difference. LinkedIn is more of a professional social media platform, but I want to get out there because of my membership. There are a lot of business-oriented people I want to give my information to so they’ll be well prepared when they go on the golf course knowing why we’re doing what we’re doing. I feel like I’m reaching a couple of different groups of people. And when you see who’s looking at your profile, that’s good. I want people at these Fortune 500 companies to recognize, whoever their staff is at their club, they’re not knuckleheads, man. They know what they’re doing, and this shines a positive light on everybody in this industry.”
Andrew Hartsock (ahartsock@gcsaa.org) is GCM’s editor-in-chief.