From hockey to volleyball and tennis to basketball, it’s safe to say Nick Scrymgeour is a natural athlete.
However, his comfort zone isn’t the rink or the court. It’s the links.
The 18-year-old Cochranite recently signed his National Letter of Intent and committed to golf with the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC) come September.
Scrymgeour’s first introduction to the game came when he was only three years old.
“I started golfing with my grandparents,” he said. “I like the competitiveness and how it’s an individual sport. When you’re on the course, you only have one person to blame if you make a mistake.”
Scrymgeour just won the Frank Lindsay Alberta junior championships in Edson July 5.
Scrymgeour played his first competitive tournament when he was nine years old and eventually enrolled at the Edge School for Athletes in Springbank. His original intent was to play for the school’s hockey program, but instead he joined the hybrid program. He played hockey in the winter and golfed in the spring. Scrymgeour completed Grade 6 and 7 at Edge and moved to Cochrane from Calgary when he was in Grade 8. Once the school moved into its now permanent Springbank campus, Scrymgeour returned in Grade 10 to finish out his high school education.
It was around that time that he began to narrow his focus to golf.
“My parents told me I had to choose and I was better at golf than everything else,” he said.
Like the other Edge School athletics programs, Scrymgeour’s golf schedule is worked around his school schedule. He and the team practiced every morning at the Springbank Links Golf Course and were given free access to the school’s workout facilities.
With Alberta’s climate making practice and competing impossible in the winter, part of Scrymgeour’s training included trips to tournaments in the United States. He’s played at courses in Oregon, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, Indianapolis and Florida.
However, just because he was on a school trip doesn’t mean he wasn’t expected to keep up with his studies.
“That’s one of the benefits of Edge,” Scrymgeour said. “The teachers there understand the travel and they’re easier on you in regards to homework. Whenever we’d travel, our coach would set aside a number of hours for us to do our homework.”
While many colleges and universities can’t begin scouting players until their last two years of school, Scrymgeour has been on the radar of several NCAA schools since he was 13. Scrymgeour fielded offers from the University of Oregon, University of Arizona, Kent State University, South Dakota State and Auburn University, but eventually committed to UMKC.
“The coach seemed like a nice guy and I’ve known him for a while,” Scrymgeour said. “I knew he wanted me from the start and that said a lot to me. I like the kind of player he thinks I can be and a lot of the schools don’t notice you until you win a big tournament. They were recruiting me from the beginning and I like people that stay loyal.”
While he has his post-secondary education secured, Scrymgeour admitted that golfing in the NCAA was never really on his radar.
“When you’re growing up, it’s hard to see yourself doing something like that,” he said.
“Everything just kind of fell into place. I didn’t have too high of expectations because not a lot of people from Canada are recruited to play NCAA. Once I started getting a few emails, I realized that it was (something I could achieve) and took it from there.”
Something that has been on Scrymgeour’s to-do list: play on the PGA tour, which he said has been a dream of his long before he knew he wanted to play at the collegiate level. When he heads to Missouri in the fall, he’s going to be competing with and against golfers that have reached the ranks that Scrymgeour is aiming for.
“I’m going to be playing against guys that are big names in the NCAA and have played tour events,” he said. “Going up against them is going to be a bit intimidating, but I’m not really scared. I’m pretty excited to go down there. It’ll be fun.
“It’s going to be a whole different atmosphere having to travel by myself and getting used to the team concept of golf down there. The level of competition is going to be quite a bit higher than up here.”
