The International Junior Golf Academy

           It’s that time of year again.  It’s your fall semester of your senior year and you are getting more excited by the day to graduate high school.  Your graduation party has been planned, your graduation money gifts are rapidly coming in the mail and you already can’t wait to go back to school next fall as a big freshman in college.  Today, that’s the norm for students.  Not for me.

            Being a very young graduation high school senior, I had a different route I wanted to take before heading to a University.  Golf is something I wanted to do in college and I wanted to make sure my game was sharp enough coming into what ever college I chose at the time to make a direct impact on the team.  Back in my early high school days, my family would vacation down in Hilton Head Island, and on that island there was a world famous junior golf academy by the name of the IJGA.  This place had a reputation for developing junior golfers into some of the best high school players in the country.  At first, I would joke around with my parents about sending me to a school where golf was the priority.  They would look at me like I was some kind of fool.  However, as my golf got more serious and we found out there was a post-graduate program at the academy, my parents and I decided that this would be the rest route for me to take.  I was headed to the academy in 2008.

            As all my high school classmates went onto their various institutions, I was on my way to South Carolina to work on my golf game and ultimately sign with a school for the next 4 years.  At first, the academy was fun and I enjoyed it greatly.   Waking up at 7 Monday through Friday for a 3 hour practice, followed by a workout then back to the course in the afternoon to play was a great way to spend your days.  Until about November.  As you know, Minnesota is a cold cold place, and this year was the first year I was able to play golf, outdoors, all year round.  At first, I didn’t think me getting sick of the game I loved would ever come into factor, but the later it got in the year and the more early mornings I had to wake up began to wear on me.  I started to look forward to coming home more than practicing.  It took a lot of will power for me to continue, and when I came home for the holidays, deciding whether I wanted to come back for the spring semester was the top topic with my parents.  However, when I chose to come back, looking back on it now was one of the best decisions I have made.

            For northerners, coming down to Hilton Head to play golf literally all day every day is stressful, and like I said it took me a while to get used to it.  It was tough to realize it at the time, but the academy not only helps their kids become more accomplished golfers, but also stresses becoming more of a strong willed individual.  Looking back on it now, I learned more about myself off the golf course that I can take with me and use for the rest of my life than what I was taught on the range.  My advice to all IJGA’ers right now is to stay positive and to just keep on grinding.  I would go back and do it again in a heartbeat.

Until next time,

CJ DeBerg