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NEWS, NOTES &
COMMENTARY
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The Bradsher Beat
Wednesday, September 28,
2011
By Bethany Bradsher |
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Strandberg tames pain to
master her game
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Julia Strandberg |
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(ECU SID image) |
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East
Division |
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SCHOOL |
C-USA |
ALL |
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ECU
Marshall
UCF
USM
Memphis
UAB |
1-0
1-0
0-0
0-1
0-1
0-2 |
1-2
1-3
2-2
3-1
1-3
0-3 |
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West
Division |
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SCHOOL |
C-USA |
ALL |
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SMU
Tulsa
Houston
Tulane
Rice
UTEP |
2-0
1-0
0-0
1-1
0-0
0-1 |
3-1
1-3
4-0
2-2
1-2
2-2 |
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By
Bethany Bradsher
©2011 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
Every collegiate athlete hopes
for a stellar senior season. But it’s unlikely that any athlete has ever
deserved an outstanding final chapter as much as Julia Strandberg.
Strandberg, a member of the ECU golf team,
has put an indelible mark on the women’s golf scene so far this fall,
winning Conference USA Golfer of the Week honors two weeks in a row for her
relaxed, efficient performances in the Pirates’ two opening tournaments.
The ECU women won the title in their first
event of the season, the Golfweek Program Challenge in Pawleys Island, SC.
Strandberg paced her teammates with a career-low 68 in the opening round
that culminated in a third place overall finish.
She followed that accomplishment by placing
first out of some 75 golfers for an individual title at the Wild Eggs
Cardinal Cup in Kentucky, leading her team to second place out of 14 squads.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Strandberg said
of her season so far. “It’s been crazy, but I’ve loved every minute.”
Strandberg has been part of head coach
Kevin Williams’ team since she was a freshman, but lately Williams has found
himself responding to fellow coaches who think Strandberg came out of
nowhere. The reason for their confusion? The Golfweek Program Challenge in
mid-September was only her third start as a collegiate golfer.
The road that marks Strandberg’s journey
through the Pirate golf program is characterized mostly by valleys, from a
freshman year full of anxiety and a rocky transition to Division I
competition to the life-altering news, late in her sophomore year, that she
has an inoperable stress fracture in one of her vertebra.
The diagnosis gave her an answer to the
back pain that had plagued her through that second season, but giving a name
to the condition was only the beginning as she struggled to cope with her
back injury and still find a way to succeed on the golf course.
Before long, Strandberg said, she was
making major changes in the way she moved through her everyday life. She had
to give up running or any high-impact exercise, stop lying on her back and
quit anything that could hyperextend her back.
“It’s been a pretty big change in my
lifestyle, but I’m accustomed to it by now,” she said.
As her daily pain became easier to manage,
Strandberg entered her junior season with high hopes of finally showing the
promise that made her a highly recruited player out of Greensboro’s Page
High School. She started in two tournaments that fall, but before the season
was over she was sidelined again by persistent spasms and tightness in her
back.
With her senior season facing her down,
Strandberg entered the summer months steeled with determination to stay on
top of her back pain, tighten her game and relax more in the heat of
competition. Her strategy involved lots of time on the golf course, often by
herself, practicing shots over and over and training her mind to push out
the stress that had so often plagued her in the past.
“I’ve never been so motivated in my life,”
she said. “I just really took this summer pretty much to get to know my golf
game.”
The results of that discipline have been
easy to track, since Strandberg’s success keeps putting her at the top of
the conference. Williams credits her emergence to several factors: Her new
mental attitude, her strong work ethic, her improved short game and a slight
swing change that eliminated the tension from her arms and upper body when
she moves the club.
“She has worked really hard at managing
it,” he said of the pain in her back. “She has persevered through so much.”
Even through the months when she couldn’t
play in the tournaments with her teammates and the chronic pain, Strandberg
has been absolutely consistent as an encouragement and support to her
teammates, Williams said. She started out with a 60 percent scholarship, but
he increased it to the full amount at the beginning of Strandberg’s junior
year, before she had proven anything in competition, because she was so
valuable to the squad.
“I rewarded her because she was such a good
teammate,” he said. “She’s just one of those kids you pull so hard for.”
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