Pilz Scholarship

As a kid growing up in Hawai’i golf was a huge part of my life, I played in junior golf tournaments for different programs and organizations. In the summer between my junior and senior year of high school I lost the majority of my central vision. It was a struggle to learn how to adapt to being visually impaired and golf was an after thought. I also had to learn how to learn and still be a full time student at an IB high school. I had no exposure to anything related to people with disabilities, let alone a student with disabilities, so it was a trial and error to attempt to finish my senior year of high school. I also stopped golfing for a decent amount of time, only getting back into it with the encouragement of my dad and my family wanting me to be outside. When trying to figure out where I would go to college we were looking at a school to support me in my academic accommodations and we came across The University of Arizona’s Disability Resource Center. With that we also learned that they had an adaptive athletics program. I was amazed to find that there were other student athletes who went through hardships and were playing collegiate sports. I then wanted to play golf for that team, and so I practiced harder in my last year of high school. I decided to give it a try and play my senior year of high school golf. It was a challenge navigating how I would go about playing and my dad and I learned the rules that other visually impaired golfers played by. 

After graduating high school I was excited to go to college. I am planning to be a Communication major and I’d potentially like to work with a golf organization. Some of my goals for the future is to connect with different schools for the blind and create opportunities for them to learn how to play golf, and if golf is not their thing then connecting them with people who can help them learn different sports and activities. I was fortunate enough as a child that I was put into a lot of different sports and activities, I want to give kids with visual impairments that same opportunity in a way that can help them be comfortable with themselves.