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Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
Metro student Jay Jay Botha is thinking big; first locally, then globally. And he isn't wasting any time while he works at pursuing his dreams.
First up, Botha has begun two new clubs on campus: inline skating and golf. The former is purely so that people on campus can have something fun to do when not at class; the latter, however, is very important to the junior from South Africa.
Because for Botha, golf is more than just a hobby; he hopes to prowl the links as his full-time job. Botha already has a plan for his future, one in which he would like to be recognized worldwide.
"I want to leave my legacy at Metro for golf, so that I can create a new one as a professional golfer," Botha said.
The plan: create a golf club at Metro. Grow the club into a legitimate contender in the region, if not a full-fledged varsity team. Leave Denver after the spring semester, and a season of competetive golf, to pursue a career as a professional golfer based either in South Africa or Europe.
"I will go and just see how much money I can make on the tour. I will be taking online classes from Metro and I won't have to rely on my parents anymore," Botha said.
This isn't blind ambition either, as he already shoots a game in the low 70's and believes that he will be shooting in the high 60's by the time the spring golf season starts. The club season will be his warm-up before he embarks for the pros, as well as practice for his back-up plan in case his pro time is short: to be a golf pro back home at a local course.
In the spring he will be the team leader of the Metro golf team and he hopes to help develop the skills of the players during the season. His hope is that the team will be impressive enough to be considered for varsity in years to come.
"If Metro ever accepts this club team to varsity, I will be so grateful to Metro that I was able to start a varsity sport," Botha said.
He believes it's a possibility because the Metro varsity swimming team was disbanded, and he added, "If one sport is lost we put a new team in."
Botha's enthusiasm and drive is evident as he plots out the course he will take as president of the Metro golf club. He hopes to put a team together in the offseason; he needs at least five members and could have as many as nine. If he is succesful, he will have a fundraiser for travel expenses to tournaments and matchups with regional teams like CSU-Pueblo and Mesa State.
As of yet he has not recruited any members for either club, but they were accepted by Metro just over a week ago after a two-month process of applying to add the clubs to the school. Botha has also spoken to Columbine Golf Course to get discounted rates for his team practice time and has plans to use the local golf academy to improve his players. Botha will be as much of a manager as coach and president, since he will have to make sure the golf players maintain full-time status during the season.
The junior has done this all in his first semester of school at Metro.
"If you snooze you lose," he likes to say.
Botha has always been driven. Ten years ago he began playing golf at local courses in Johannesburg and before long he was thinking big.
"In South Africa they take you real seriously for what you are trying to do," he said.
After living in the country his first 18 years, Botha left Africa as the political turmoil and the violence worsened. He wound up in La Junta, Colo. with his mother and her new husband, a U.S. citizen.
"At that time things were not going very well," Botha said of South Africa. "The violence was very bad."
The violence in his native Johannesburg has only worsened since he left and politics remain rocky with an election coming up. So he is thinking about basing himself in Portugal when he becomes a professional golfer, a country he has visited already and that has a climate as humid as South Africa, very different from the dry, high desert of Colorado.
"I will buy a home in another country, maybe Portugal, but I will go back to South Africa depending on what the conditions are back there," he said.
But first, Botha would just like to leave a legacy, even a small one, here at Metro.
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