Campus High’s Kiley Maier Winfield’s Savanna Nickum

By Matt Browning

Kiley Maier of Campus was voted the Wichita Large School Preseason Girls Golfer of the Year. Maier was a second team allleague golfer last season for the Colts.

“For this season my expectations are to work on my mental game when practicing and playing,” Maier said. “My main goal is to place in more tournaments as a team and to qualify for state again.”

Maier said one of her strengths is a feel for what clubs to hit in a variety of conditions, like knowing when to club up or club down.

“I try to use my strength to help teach my teammates like wind, hot weather vs. cold weather and things like that,” Maier said. “I have been working on my mental game with just learning some exercises to remind myself that I can still have a good round even if I have one bad round.”

Campus golf coach Josh Curtiss said Maier has put in a tremendous amount of work to be the golfer she is today.

“She has been our best golfer since her freshman year,” Curtiss said. “She continues to put in a tremendous amount of time to improve her golf game and it is starting to show up with her results from tournaments.”

Maier is hopeful to play golf in college and she would like to study to be a dermatologist.

By Matt Browning

Savanna Nickum of Winfield was chosen as the Wichita Small School Preseason Girls Golfer of the Year. Nickum finished in a tie for eighth last season at the 4A Tournament and helped the Vikings to a second place finish as a team.

“I would say something that left me wanting more was after our team had such an awesome season, we lost being two-time state champs by one stroke,” Nickum said. “At the time it was devastating, but you pick yourself back up and work hard towards the next goal you set for yourself.”

One of the reasons why Nickum has improved so drastically over the past two seasons (30th place at state as a sophomore) is her short game.

“I think I’m pretty good at reading the greens and my short game has improved tremendously since my freshman year,” Nickum said.

Over the offseason, she started seeing a new coach in hopes of taking her game to a new level.

“To improve on my weaknesses, I have been seeing a new swing coach to be able to shave off even more strokes and improve mechanics,” Nickum said. “So far he’s helped me so much, I’m very encouraged with it.”

Just a junior, Nickum has no doubts she wants to play golf in college and plans to double major in Criminal Justice and Accounting.