These college players met as teammates. They became soulmates

Bamberger briefly It is sponsored by Charles Schwab, host of the annual winner of women’s college Charles Schwab.

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In 2019, Steph CurryNoted Golf Nut, the Star and the NBA philanthropy, announced that it was making a Major commitment For the creation of Golf teams for men and women of Division I at Howard University, ELITE Academic and historically black school in Washington, DC Major, and onwards. ESPN directed this news impossible in its latest screen movement during the day. Countless people received attention.

Sam Puryear, an executive and coach of well -traveled golf (East lakeStanford, Michigan State), was among them. At the beginning of 2020 he was appointed as director of men’s and women’s teams in Howard. The obstacles were scary. Pandemia had broken the world. Howard had no staunch golf culture. He needed players with serious academic credentials and golf. But Puryear had two things going for him. He likes a challenge. And anything that Steph Curry makes the attention of the command.

Unknown to Puryear, three teenage girls in three different states withdrew in the announcement as it was. All three girls were serious players and serious students. They met at Howard in August 2021 at Freshman’s orientation, at the beginning of the first year Howard had two full -time golf teams. They have been a trio since then. In May, all three women – Makenna Rodriguez, from South Florida; Jada Richardson, from Atlanta Suburban; And Kendall Jackson, by Greater Houston – Graduated together Howard.

This week, they are scattered. Kendall, as an amateur with plans to return pros, is playing in a tournament in Epson near Hartford. Jada, who will matriculate at the Howard School of Law next month, is attending a massive international meeting of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. And Makenna is preparing a work she is presenting at the University of Pittsburgh, entitled “Comparative Analysis of Binding Materials for Conducting Stability in Micro-Invasive Nerve Verses.” It plans to follow a Ph.D. in a related field. A medical degree can be followed. As Tiger likes, it’s a process.

Makenna and Jada are the Break-80 players. Kendall can break 70 on each given day. They all cheerfully deceive when they confess a team trip to St. Andrews. Rarely there are days when everyone does not know what the other two are doing. (Group text wonders.) They know the habits of eating each other. (All three are annoying meals.) They know the families and stories of each other’s family. (Makenna’s father is a Jeshanazi-meaning of European origin-who lived in Venezuela before being transferred to South Florida.) They all know how Puryear coach feels about meeting within the team: “I fully discourage him,” he said in an interview. But all three ladies will tell you: even the coach P., a man with a considerable presence, cannot stop the new romance dead in his footsteps.

Kendall played in Amateur of US women Last year on Monday, she played in the qualification for this year’s amateur. Jada and Makenna knew about her first noise almost as soon as it happened. (Miracles of the Genius Golf app and its real -time results.) She was lost by a gang. She was raised before dawn on Tuesday, flying from Houston to Hartford for the Epson event.

Puryear sees a Nobel Prize in the future of Makenna’s life. He sees Lpga Golf years in Kendall. And a career as an electricity lawyer in Jada. All three women spoke about the inspiration they receive from Steph Curry, as an athlete and humanitarian, and from Kamala Harris, a 1986 Howard graduate who made her concession speech last year at university. Howard University, appointed to a General of the Union in the Civil War, has been widely and respected since its establishment in 1867. While Washington has Georgetown and American and Catholic on his college list, he also has Howard. Bisons.

Earlier this year, in Lady Bison Invitational, Kendall had a second place. She also took the second place at the National College Women’s Championship. She too was pleased and disappointed. It had two sets of shoulder to back up.

“We’re always there for the other,” Jada said. “I really think we’ll always be, for the rest of our lives.”

For several years, there has been a plan for Howard Golf to take a well -known public course at DC, Langston Golf Course, called for a former Howard University Law School, Bison’s home course. But Langston is in the throes of a Project of the Evolution of RenewalAnd Puryear has established relations with four private courses at the university. His golfists pass from one course to another to practice and play on each given day. “We have to practice in quick greens,” he said. Rapid greens, practice short games with areas, and where you can get in the practical rounds of late day, nine holes in less than two hours. He is competing for players with low handicaps and high GPA with other college schools who often have a university course. The agreements he has made with these private clubs are a life -saving life for him.

But what Puryear has managed to discover when you recruit high school female color players is that Howard sells yourself. This is the biggest truth – and the biggest one. The student body is about 70 percent female, and about 70 percent black. Across the country, but especially in California and Texas, Puryear is finding black girls from the country’s club families who are shooting 78 or better who want that kind of environment for their college experience.

Their high school lives are often very different from this. They know that life after college is likely to look very different. But to come to Howard, like golf players and students, and be in a campus where you expect Seeing other black women is a welcome thing. Puryear often finds themselves recruiting girls who quote Howard as their first choice. In the summer of ‘2, he signed a girl from George, a girl from Florida, a girl from Texas that way.

“What I heard was,” I want to be the best version for me that I can be, I want to make a difference, I want to change the world, “Puryear said.

During four years, those three girls – Jada Richardson, Makenna Rodriguez and Kendall Jackson – turned into teammates and soulmates. They turned into three members, among the other 3,200, in the ’25 Howard University class.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments in Michael.bamberger@golf.com