A minor defeat may turn into a notable victory for Kristin Walla.
Aspen High School claims to have a girls golf team, but for three years Walla and her father, John, took one long road trip after another across the state so she could be the school’s lone representative at the top meets.
There were not enough serious female prep golfers in Aspen to put a full travelling team together, so Walla went it alone. And she did great, finishing fourth at the Class 4A state meet last year as a junior and consistently scoring in the mid-70s. But the camaraderie of a team was missing, so Walla and her family petitioned the school in hopes of joining the boys’ team, which plays in the fall.
No luck. No problem, though.
Walla is back out on the links this spring, playing the girls season, and her aggressive style and shrinking scores make her one of the front-runners for a state title next month.
“Golf is probably the No. 1 thing in my life,” said Walla, who recently signed to play at the University of Texas. “I really do want to win a state title.”
The competition is stiff. Mullen’s Ashley Tait has two state titles to her credit, and Pueblo South’s Sarah Ruybalid, who tied Walla for fourth last year, returns to the field, along with Estes Park’s Dawn Shockley, who finished third a year ago.
Walla thinks she has at least one distinct advantage.
“I have a pretty aggressive swing,” said Walla, who was born and raised in Aspen. “When you swing aggressively but not out of your shoes, you can do more with your shots. I think a lot of girls don’t swing as hard as they are capable of, and I think a lot of them could improve if they accelerated into the ball.”
Walla, who twice won gold at the Junior Olympics in skiing aerials before blowing out her right knee, grew up playing golf with her brother, Nate, and the rest of her family, and she credits her approach to them.
John Walla recalled a number of occasions where he had to get a cart and pull the two siblings off the course after sunset.
“They turned into total golf junkies,” said John Walla, who played at the University of California-Santa Barbara until 1971 before briefly turning pro.
One night, Nate came home from the driving range with bloody hands, and his concerned father asked how many balls he hit.
“Four buckets,” Nate replied.
“Well, that’s not enough to make your hands bleed,” John said.
“No, Dad, you don’t understand. I hit four buckets with each club.”
That’s the type of motivation that sent Nate and Kristin out to the course day after day, and the results paid off as Kristin won Western Slope regionals as a freshman, sophomore and junior. Odds are she will do it again as a senior. She has won 17 tournaments in four years, including five this season, and has shot 69 twice.
Two days with performances close to that would challenge Tait’s attempt to repeat as state champion.
“She’s gotten a lot more consistent. She doesn’t make a lot of mistakes,” said Tait, who has been paired with Walla twice this season. “She’s pretty much right down the middle, and she can get up and down pretty good.”
After Walla, Tait and others go head-to-head at state, which will be held May 23-24 at the Cotton Ranch Club in Gypsum, Walla will waste little time getting started on her next adventure. And it will have little, if anything, to do with Colorado.
“Even when I was little, I knew college would be a completely different experience, and I had no desire to stay in Colorado,” Walla said. “I’ve got a pretty bad case of senioritis.”
Once at Texas, which consistently ranks in the top 25 and plays one of the nation’s most competitive schedules, Walla hopes to break into the starting lineup right away. Scores in the mid to low 70s on the longer, 6,200-yard courses should put her there. And that’s the short-term goal, to make the top five.
But Walla always has one eye on the future.
“I think every college golfer has a goal of going pro,” she said. “I’d like to see where that could go.”
