Our Past Often Drives our Future

My Grandfather and the Game of Golf

By TRISTON BUCKLEY

Family history and influence are some of the key factors that guide us in the process of shaping and evolving into the people we develop into.

When we are young and have little idea of how the real world works, we look closely to the environment we live in and the people closest to us to try and develop our own individual identity.

With such a limited amount of comprehension of the world around us as kids, we pay more attention to friends, family and peers with so many different key personality traits, because it allows us to get a different perspective and way to approach life.

For example, when I was very young I had a limited amount of comprehension of how the world worked, but one of the few things that I did seem to understand more easily than others was sports. This was due to the amount of time and attention sports were given by the people in my family.

My dad was very much into football, golf, basketball and soccer. My mom and grandma were very good tennis players who played frequently and had a lot of success playing competitively.

And my grandfather was an accomplished golfer who played basketball while also being successful playing baseball during college.

After being introduced to the world of sports I was able to develop some of the real world comprehension that I was so eager to understand, and sports began to become my world.

I would pay close attention to these sports, watching Trent Green and Dick Vermeil lead the Kansas City Chiefs to victories every Sunday, and watching Tiger Woods sink pressure putts to win major tournaments in his signature red shirt, all while developing my passion for sports.

Because of the influences I had so early in my life, and being the active and energetic child I was, I began to participate in the various sports that I found most interesting, attending seasonal athletics camps for various sports.

But most impactful out of all the influences in my life was ultimately my grandfather, who had the most significant effect on me and would shape me into the student-athlete I am today.

It was the immense love and passion my grandfather had for the game of golf that affected me the most and would ultimately shape the future that I wanted, which includes playing varsity golf here at MBU.

Playing golf with my grandfather growing up allowed me to see a side of the game that I fell in love with. He was my biggest role model, the most impactful influencer during my childhood, and he offered the most important contributions in shaping my own personality traits as I moved into adulthood.

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Jefferson Got It Wrong

By MORGAN KROMER

As a child, the thing I remember which brought my family together the most was traveling out of state to visit family, and in doing so, going off-route in order to visit historic sites.

I grew up in what most people would label a “volatile home,” as there was hardly a day that went by which did not include explosive fights between my parents.

But when my younger brother, my mom, dad and I packed into the red Chrysler Town and Country minivan and headed into the unknown, things would change, and for the moment we were the perfect facade of a happy family, sometimes believing it ourselves.

Yet as I got older, the trips started including their fights, then the trips became less frequent, the fights became scarier, and I became invisibly depressed.

But my parents, no matter how much they could not get along with each other, refused to let me drown.

I went to therapy and started to open up about how I felt, and the message I got was loud and clear — I may never be completely intoxicated with joy ever again, but more importantly, that is not the goal.