GCHS alumnus turned golf pro to lead new Grundy Center Golf Academy

GRUNDY CENTER — Kyle Olson has great memories of junior golf in Grundy Center. He has memories of making the varsity team as a freshman … of traveling the state with his coach, Dennis Dirks, to compete in junior golf tournaments throughout the state … and of falling in love with the sport.
    That love of golf became a career for Olson, who has gone on to become the first assistant golf professional at Highland Woods Golf & Country Club in Bonita Springs, Fla.
    And he also never forgot his roots.
    Last year on a trip back to Iowa, Olson contacted his first-ever junior golf coach, Rick Schupbach, about playing a round at his old stomping grounds, Town and Country Golf Club. It was there that the two began to talk about the future of junior golf in Grundy Center, specifically the annual Junior Golf Academy that Schupbach has led for more than two decades.
    “I was concerned about the future because when I resign as coach, which I anticipate doing in a couple of years when I retire, I don’t know if the next coach will want to be taking over this,” Schupbach said. “I know, for the girls anyway, that this program has helped sustain us because you’ll always get one or two girls that came through that program. Maybe they missed finding their niche somewhere else, but they kind of revert back and remember junior golf and, maybe they had a positive experience or maybe I told them they had some talent … for whatever reason we just seemed to flow a couple of girls out of each grade.”
 

For more of this story, see the May 8 Grundy Register.