Fresh Faces: Erynne Lee, women's golf
Fresh Faces
This past year, three freshmen emerged as top athletes "“ but faced challenges along the way.
Read about two other amazing freshmen:
Paul Reynolds, men’s water polo
Stephany LaRosa, softball
By Tyler Drohan
July 8, 2012 9:26 a.m.
For most of rising sophomore Erynne Lee’s life, golf and family have gone hand-in-hand.
It was her father, Brian Lee, who got her to play golf at the age of 8, inspired after watching South Korean Se Ri Pak win a LPGA tournament.
It was her sister, Katie Lee, who proved her biggest rival on the course while competing in the junior ranks.
While Erynne and Katie went toe-to-toe with each other for the Washington State Women’s Amateur title ““ Erynne holding off her younger sibling to win by two strokes ““ it was her father and her mother, Debbie Lee who caddied for the two.
While preparing for a tournament during the fall, Erynne received an emergency call that her mother was ill. She did not travel with the team for their tournament in Hawaii and instead flew to South Korea to be with her mother. Debbie, who suffered a stroke, passed away the day before Thanksgiving.
“After my mom passed away, it opened a new eye, opened a new perspective for me towards golf and my life,” Erynne said.
After the tragedy, Erynne said she experienced growth both as a person and as a golfer.
“Before my mom passed away, we were always strong, together,” Erynne said of her family. “But I guess after having a tragedy pass by like that … it taught us to love each other more. From that I learned that golf is not everything, it’s not your life.”
This shift in Erynne’s mind-set changed the way she approached the game. On the golf course, she learned to control her emotions and embrace both the bad and the good, taking lessons away from those experiences and moving on.
“She had to deal with so much of that really on her own in many ways. She felt like she didn’t want to burden others with it as much as we were all wanting her to burden us. That’s just not her style,” women’s golf coach Carrie Forsyth said.
“Erynne has, from the beginning, handled it very well with an immense amount of maturity that I don’t think most people have.”
Besides the Rainbow Wahine Invitational in Hawaii, Erynne did not miss another tournament during her freshman year. After placing third in her first three tournaments of the spring and finishing T-19th in another, Erynne finally had her major breakthrough, winning her first-ever college event as an individual.
In windy, blustery conditions at Half Moon Bay Golf Links, she placed as the top individual golfer by three strokes at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate.
“I think that was really key for her, and I know she’d been knocking on the door the previous tournaments before that,” rising senior Tiffany Lua said. “So I just think it was kind of her moment that she got over the hump and pulled out the win.”
Both Erynne and the team pointed to the tournament win as an emotional one for all.
“It really put the cherry on top of that tournament,” Erynne said of the win. “It was amazing. (We were) emotionally together as a team and it just felt right.”
In a freshman year that both Erynne and her coach said exceeded their expectations, there was still one more emotional win in store.
At the National Golf Coaches Association banquet following the final round of the NCAA Championship, Erynne was named the NGCA Freshman of the Year. Erynne, also later named the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, said she was shocked to hear her name called.
“To see her win and to see her give that speech, really she only cracked one time, and she kept it together,” Forsyth said. “We were just so proud of her and so happy for her to sit there with something positive after all the stuff that had happened in her life this past year, to have something like that to feel good about … and almost as a tribute to her mother, and what she meant to her.”
Erynne will compete this August in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Though her ultimate goal is to compete on the LPGA Tour, Erynne said she will remain in school before taking that next step.
“I’m planning on staying all four years, living my college life,” Erynne said with a laugh.
Erynne described team members as being like a second family to her and said she enjoys spending time with them, including team dinners on campus.
Forsyth, named Pac-12 Coach of the Year for the fifth time after completing her 13th season at UCLA, knows she has a special golfer and person in Erynne.
“I just can’t wait to see what the coming years are going to bring for her,” Forsyth said. “(She is) one of those players that makes you really happy to be a coach.”
