By Santana Shipley
Twenty-seven players from 11 states competed in the Inaugural Indiana Adaptive Golf Championship, in September, at the Plum Creek Golf Club. The Championship included both Overall and Senior divisions with nine different impairment categories as defined by the United States Adaptive Golf Alliance Player Classification system.
David McCready, from Brownsburg, is a part of the Midwestern Adaptive Golf Association and approached Indiana Golf Executive Director Mike David with the idea for the event.
“We are excited to become involved in the Adaptive Golf arena. We think there is a tremendous interest from this segment of the population and golf is a sport that can be played by everyone,” said mcCready. “We hope to grow our programming for adaptive players in the future. This was the first step.”
There were many interesting stories about the contestants. Alex Rivera, 22, from Columbus, Indiana, finished well down the leaderboard, but was happy to be competing. He competes in the Below the Knee Division and has been golfing since he was two years old. Rivera played high school golf, but became a serious with snowboarder.
While he was training in Colorado for the Paralympics a bad fall left him with a shattered right arm, the subsequent recovery dashed his Paralympics dream. He returned to golf to stay active and positive.
Kyle Erickson, from Minneapolis, who has been playing golf for most of his life, shot a final round 71 to secure the first-ever Men’s Overall Champion of the Indiana Adaptive Golf Championship.
Erickson started the final round two strokes behind day-one leader, Evan Mathias of Indianapolis. Erickson carded three birdies and finished the final round at one-under par to amass a four-stroke lead for the win.
“The fact that Indiana Golf is stepping up to do this is awesome and every state should be taking part,” said Erickson. “I promise that this will become one of the biggest tournaments on the Adaptive Golf circuit because Indiana Golf did an amazing job putting this on.”
The runner-up, and Multiple Leg Division winner, Evan Mathias, participated on the men’s golf team at Marian University and holds the ParaLong Drive Cup record at 398 yards.
The overall Senior Division champion was Les Meade of West Lafayette, Indiana, who finished 80-94. Meade has been playing golf for roughly 30 years and was more than thrilled to find out that the IGA was hosting this tournament.
Division Champions
Above Knee (G1) – John Bell
Arm-Assisted (G5) – Jonathan Snyder
Arm-Unassisted (G4) – James Warren
Below Knee (G2) – Kyle Erickson
Blind (G13) – Kenny Gentile
CP/MD (G8) – Robby Donarski
Multiple Leg (G3) – Evan Mathias
Seated (G9) – Steve Doubt
Short Stature (G14) – Ethan Crough
Overall Men’s Division
1st: Kyle Erickson
2nd: Evan Mathias
Overall Senior Division
1st: Les Meade
