Article Contributed on: 6/2/2008 3:36:40 PM
While golf is an individual sport, Horizon High School graduates
Chris Keirns and
Brandon Schroeder aren't swinging solo.
Avid golfers and best friends since fifth grade, the duo has tee'd off together more times than they can count.
The pair met at Hunters Glen Elementary School in Thornton and started hitting the fairway together the summer after fifth grade. Keirns and Schroeder, both 18, have been inseparable ever since.
Starting in middle school, they golfed for the Gold Crown Foundation, a league for kids to play nine holes of golf. They graduated to 18 holes when they hit high school and tried out for the Horizon Hawks golf team. They didn't just make the team, they made varsity, a rarity for freshmen.
They went on to be two-year state participants, three-year All-Conference players, 4-year varsity letter winners and the best high school golfers to come out of Horizon, and perhaps the region, in several years.
Next year they will continue their golfing legacy on a Division II golf team at West Texas A&M University.
It wasn't a big surprise to those who know them best that the friends would continue their journey together.
"For the most part, (it's not) one without the other," said
Tony Anderson, manager of Thorncreek Golf Course in Thornton.
When Keirns and Schroeder aren't playing at Thorncreek, they're working there. They've worked for the past two years in the golf course's cart barn and pro shop.
The pair credit each other for getting themselves as far as they have in the mentally demanding sport that takes discipline and an inordinate amount of time. Without each other's company, they say there wouldn't have been as many 10-hour days on the golf course.
"I don't think I'd play golf as much (without Schroeder)," Keirns said. "It would get boring."
Those days on the golf course in the snow or after the sun went down landed them golf - and academic - scholarships to West Texas.
That much time together also has helped them critique each other's play.
"We know each other's game better than anybody else," Keirns said.
They also know when to offer advice and when to give each other space as they did in their highly competitive roles vying for the no. 1 and no. 2 seed at Horizon, from which they graduated June 2, but not without a few swings on the driving range before and after their graduation ceremony.
They love to play, they said, because there is always a challenge in which to strive and many sunny Colorado days to spend outside goofing around, but also improving.
"We help push each other," Schroeder said.
"If he has a good round, he'll push me and vice versa," Keirns added.
Their support for each other - even though they are competitors - has never wavered through the ups and downs of their game.
That's how it was when Keirns missed state by one stroke junior year and when Schroeder let his nerves get the better of him senior year when college recruiters increased the pressure.
"All we can do is be happy for each other," Schroeder said. "You don't want to take the moment away from the other person."
As much as people who don't know them well often get them confused and as much as the pair has in common, - an unwavering commitment to golf and an easy-going demeanor on-and-off the green - they have separate lives.
They went to prom together, for example, but they weren't each other's dates, they joked.
"We like the same things, but it's not like we're holding each others hands through the process," Schroeder joked.
While they won't be holding each other's hands at college in the fall, the jokesters will continue lending a hand when need be - just as they've done since they were 10 years old.