Long Beach State University Athletics
Love Has a Spot with This Golf Team
8/12/2008 12:00:00 AM | General
Aug. 8, 2008
Austin Love has a spot on the golf team at Long Beach State.
Not a chance at a spot. Not a tryout for a spot. Not a promise for a spot maybe, somewhere down the road.
The Foothill High School grad and 2006 Northern Section champion will start as a freshman this season. They took down his measurements and everything.
Come fall semester, Love will have a Long Beach State 49ers-issued belt, cap, pants and shirt. Plus he gets a little grant money for books with the hopes of it turning into a lot of scholarship cash when Long Beach golf graduates three seniors and frees up its budget.
Love finished high school one of the most accomplished prep golfers in recent north state history. He won the section Masters tournament as a junior. Made a run at it his senior year and led Foothill to team section and league titles in the process.
He passed up scholarship offers to other schools -- because he wanted to be with his girlfriend -- to attend Chico State, golf on scholarship and work toward a construction management degree.
Love said Chico coach Keith Thomas was surprised to have him.
"He said 'I thought we were kind of the bottom end of choices for you,'" Love recalled. "But he said he had a spot for me."
Later that summer Thomas resigned. Austin said he called new Chico coach T.L. Brown, who assured him his spot was safe. When got to school that fall, "he didn't remember me," Love said.
On top of that, Chico wouldn't hold tryouts -- and he and his girlfriend of four years broke up.
"Everything kind of fell through," Love said. "It's the best thing that ever could have happened to me."
Brown prodded Austin to play
more tournaments. Because Chico wouldn't hold a tryout the only way Love could play his way onto a college roster was by hitting the summer amateur circuit.
This, of course, is no simple feat. Simply being a college student is expensive. Being a college student and driving around the western U.S. playing golf all summer is rolling the ol' financial dice.
Austin's mom, Shasta High counselor and north state softball legend Becky Love, helped bank roll the tour, but even that had its limits.
"We're driving around the state hitting all these hotels and the credit card company would cut us off," Love said. "They thought her card had been stolen."
Austin's break came July 16 when he made the cut at the United States Amateur Public Links Championship at Murphy Creek Golf Club in Aurora, Colo.
"I was almost ... OK, I'll admit it. I was in tears when I qualified for the Pub Links," Love said. "I knew what it meant."
It meant he could hold his own with the majority of Division I NCAA golfers.
It also meant schools up and down the coast took notice of the unattached kid from Chico.
University of the Pacific coach Brandon Goethals, an Enterprise grad, helped Austin with a glowing recommendation that helped Love land offers from Long Beach State and UC Stanislaus.
He picked Long Beach because it offered his preferred major, construction management.
Austin said 49ers coach William Poutre also guaranteed he wouldn't pull the rug out from underneath him.
"I said, 'Coach, no hard feelings toward you, but I don't want to get down there and go through this all over again,'" Love said. "He said, 'Don't worry. You have a bag here with your name on it.'"
