Drury University Athletics

Celeste Ball will enter her fifth season as the head coach of the Panthers women's golf program in 2023-24.

In 2022-23, Drury produced their golfer advancing to the NCAA regional championship when Shehna Akbary received an individual at-large bid. The Panthers advanced to the match play semifinals at the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament for the second straight season. Drury also had a tournament win that season as the Panthers won the Kentucky Wesleyan Invitational and Akbary got an individual medalist victory at the Natural State Classic. 

Ball's third year as head coach saw Drury have their best finish in the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament since 2015 when their finished fourth in stroke play and reached the league semifinals. The Panthers took 11th ranked Indianapolis to the wire in tournament play falling 3-2. Annaliesia Salazar finished tied for 15th in stroke play. Drury also turned in an individual championship during the season as Taryn Overstreet won the Kentucky Klash in Perry Park, Kentucky. The Panthers were the runner-up in that event and had a pair of second-place finishes during the season. Drury also won a Team Academic Award from the GLVC and featured seven Academic All-GLVC honorees. 

In 2020-21, she led the Panthers to a sixth-place at the GLVC Championship. Annaliesia Salazar finished tied for 14th at the league event. During the season, Drury won the Columbia Classic, and had a second-place finish at the Rockhurst Invitational. 

The 2019-20 season saw the cancelation of the spring season due to the coronavirus pandemic. That fall, the Panthers got a tournament win in the event they hosted, the Drury Invitational at Silo Ridge.   

In her first season, Drury won the Panthers Fall Invitational and played in four tournaments in the fall before the spring season was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. The team posted a 3.64 grade-point-average earning a Team Academic Award from the Great Lakes Valley Conference. 

Ball was Drury's volunteer assistant coach in the spring of 2019, a stint that included a tournament win by the Panthers at the Rockhurst Invitational, and a second-place finish at the Illinois Springfield Spring Invitational that saw DU freshman Ellie Cobb take co-medalist honors. Ball took the program's helm from head coach Lisa Tinkler following the end of the 2018-19 campaign. 
 
While coaching at Drury, Ball also served as a golf and life skills coach at The First Tee of Northwest Arkansas. She developed the curriculum and taught golf classes, organized golf outings, and aided in the fundraising and marketing of the Rogers, Arkansas based organization. Ball was also an assistant golf pro at Twin Oaks Country Club from 2015 to 2016 and was the assistant manager and head pro at Springfield Golf & Country Club in 2014-15.
 
Following her college career at Central Arkansas, Ball played three seasons professionally on the Suncoast Tour (now known as the NWGA Egg-land's Best Tour) and had five top 10 finishes including a second-place finish. She competed in two LPGA Qualifying School tournaments and two Canadian Women's Tour events.
 
As a member of the Central Arkansas women's golf team from 2007-11, Ball posted a tournament win in the McNeese State Cowgirl Invitational and was the Women's Golfer of the Month for November of 2009 in the Southland Conference. She had two other top-10 finishes, and she helped her team to a conference runner-up finish in 2010. Ball graduated from Central Arkansas in 2012 with a degree in Health Science.
 
C.J. is just the third head coach in program history. Lisa Tinkler had two stints guiding the program (2003-12, and 2017-19), and Dawna Jo Hartman served as head coach from 2013-2016.

She and her husband Charlie have two children, son Logan, and daughter Eleanor.