Baldwin City ? Baker University golf coach Karen Exon has always been an advocate of good sportsmanship, high-level fitness and being educated when it comes to the game she loves.

Those three characteristics have helped Exon guide the Baker women’s golf team to three consecutive Heart of America Athletic Conference championships, but they also help her excel personally in another sport.

Exon recently completed her fourth Missouri River 340 kayak race, which starts in Kansas City, Kansas, and ends in St. Charles, Missouri. She finished in a tie for second in the women’s solo division, clocking in at 56 hours and 54 minutes for the 340-mile race.

“I enjoy testing myself, and I appreciate what it takes for others to test themselves,” Exon said. “If it’s a sport and there’s an expectation of good character and integrity, I really enjoy it.”

Good sportsmanship

At 7 a.m. on July 28, Exon and 341 other kayakers took off from Kaw Point, where the Kansas River terminates at the Missouri River.

Exon battled extreme heat near the beginning and end of the race and had to maneuver through an evening thunderstorm during the middle stages of the event, but she found herself in a battle for second with the finish line quickly approaching.

Susan Tetter had a 15-minute lead on Exon late into the second day of the race, but the Higginsville, Missouri, native suffered from heat exhaustion and hypothermia. Exon was able to catch and pass Tetter with less than 50 miles to go, but she realized it would come down to the wire.

With 26 miles to go, the two began talking to each other for a few miles, and Exon found out Tetter was “bonking,” meaning that she was hitting a wall.

“When you bonk in an endurance sport, you are totally out of gas,” Exon said. “You are beginning to have real trouble. She was bonking. She just could not keep paddling.”

Despite her competitiveness, Exon could not allow herself to paddle away from Tetter.

“We both had our trials and tribulations, and I said, ‘What do you think about we help each other out and we paddle in together and we just tie for second?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I would really appreciate that,'” Exon said. “That’s one of the cool things about endurance racing and ultra-marathon racing on moving water. It’s an unwritten rule that if you see somebody in trouble, it’s incumbent upon you to be a good Samaritan.”

Fitness fanatic

As a college golf coach and the president of the Kansas Women’s Golf Association, there is not a lot of time for Exon to practice kayaking, especially during the school year.

After coaching the BU women’s golf team to 26th place at the NAIA Championships in late May and working as a grounds and rules official for a tournament in Salina in early June, the Topeka native had only about five weeks to focus strictly on kayaking before the MR 340.

Exon, 62, is able to maintain a strong core between playing golf and cross-training, to go along with the time she spends kayaking. Even when Exon is able to get off her feet while at home, that does not mean she isn’t able to get some exercise in.

“I’ve got a nine-pound bar that I could sit all day long in a paddle position and do a simulated double-weight paddle stroke with that,” she said. “If you can do that right in the front of the TV for 20 minutes and then go out and paddle on the lake or paddle on the river, you’d think that was a walk in the park.”

Exon credited her fitness as a big reason why she was able to race her second-fastest time in the MR 340 despite the tough weather conditions.

She was still feeling the effects of the 340-mile trek a week removed from the race, though.

“When we go for 55-60 hours on two hours and 30 minutes of sleep and you’ve paddled at least 46 hours of that, if not more, and every hour you paddle, you burn 675 calories,” Exon said, “there’s no way to replace the calories that you burn. If you do the math, that’s like 30,000 calories thereabouts that you’re burning. For about a week after the race, you continue to drop weight, and I’ve dropped now about eight pounds, which is not altogether bad.”

Student and teacher

Exon takes pride in what she is able to accomplish in both kayaking and golf, but her top priority is getting the most out of her athletes on the men’s and women’s golf teams at Baker.

Exon began her time at Baker in 1989 as a professor of history and political science and then became the women’s golf coach in 1998 for the program’s inaugural season.

“I started the women’s golf program from nothing,” Exon said. “I agreed to start the program in 1997. In the spring of ’98, I took it to the very first Heart of America conference championship.”

In 2005, Exon took over the men’s golf program as well.

She helped the BU men’s squad to runner-up finishes in the HAAC in 2013 and 2014. After six years of coaching both the men’s and women’s golf teams along with teaching, Exon knew she had to give something up after the 2010 spring season.

“I had opportunity to take an early retirement. At 21 years at Baker, I had never had a sabbatical because you don’t take a sabbatical when you coach,” Exon said. “There’s just not time, there’s not manpower. Your program would suffer if you did. So after 21 years, I needed a break. Life has been good.”

With both teams experiencing a fair share of success since Exon retired from teaching, life has been good for her student-athletes, too.

Senior Lindsey Mateer, a 13-time HAAC Golfer of the Week and 2015 individual conference champion, has been a key contributor to the Wildcats’ recent success. Mateer entered her freshman campaign fairly new to golf compared to some of her teammates, but she said Exon gave her much-needed confidence to help her game blossom.

“She has believed in me every step of the way, and when I didn’t really believe in myself, I feel like that is how she has helped me out the most in my collegiate golf career,” Mateer said. “I started (golfing competitively) really late, so I wasn’t the best coming in freshman year. I have improved tremendously with her help.”

Mateer has also gained knowledge about golf from Exon, and the coach’s golf expertise has not gone unnoticed by others around the nation.

In February, Exon was given a two-year term as a volunteer as a rules official for the United States Golf Association.

“When the USGA finds out that you’ve scored well enough on the Rules of Golf exam and attended enough of those workshops, they’re going to want you to be a rules official at USGA qualifiers and championships,” Exon said with a laugh.

Exon has got the message across to her athletes that school comes first before golf.

Mateer and teammate Emma Tinsley were Daktronics-NAIA scholar athletes after maintaining a cumulative grade-point average of 3.5 or higher.

“Every single student-athlete in my program, whether they are a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior, has exuded through the year measurable growth as a person: academically and athletically,” Exon said. “I’ve been privileged to be a part of that at some level and to witness it.”