Rachel Heck was aggravated. For 2 straight weeks, the previous Stanford golfer and present lieutenant within the U.S. Air Pressure Reserves had been receiving texts from an unknown quantity. The unknown sender stored asking Heck if she was free for a chat, however, pondering the messages had been spam, she ignored them.
Then she obtained a message from Rob Ohno, president and CEO of the Annika Basis. Ohno informed Heck that Annika Sörenstam, the 72-time LPGA Tour winner with 10 main championships, was attempting to contact her.
“I noticed I’d been ghosting Annika for 2 weeks and I used to be simply mortified,” Heck mentioned. “I don’t assume I’d ever been so mortified in my life, I used to be ghosting the GOAT of golf.”
Sörenstam informed Heck that she can be the inaugural winner of the Annika Inspiration Award, which celebrates ladies who’re utilizing their affect, ardour, and management to encourage others past their aggressive achievements in golf. Heck was an NCAA particular person champion and a part of two NCAA Championship-winning groups at Stanford, however skilled golf wasn’t for her. Battling accidents and despair since highschool, Heck discovered her dwelling within the Air Pressure.
“I feel it’s simply unbelievable that they’re highlighting that they usually’re setting an instance for younger women for whom golf shouldn’t be the end-all be-all,” Heck mentioned. “You possibly can work at golf with all of your coronary heart and it offers you these expertise to sort out any problem.”
Sörenstam says Heck is deserving of the inaugural award, which was introduced Wednesday.
“She is the proper instance of how success in sport is usually a platform for better function,” she mentioned. “She’s had a tremendous golf profession, however what makes her really particular is the best way she is utilizing the platform that golf has given her to serve our nation and assist others.”
Like many younger women, Heck grew up idolizing Sörenstam. To win an award named after her favourite participant is a real honor, she mentioned.
“In case you would have informed me once I was a bit of bitty woman, that sooner or later Annika would even know my title, I feel I’d have cried,” she mentioned. “It’s surreal.”
Heck, alongside together with her older sister, Abby, and youthful sister, Anna, grew up on the golf course. What drew her to the sport was the identical factor that attracted her to Stanford’s Air Pressure Reserve Officers’ Coaching Corps program.
“I simply love issues which are so mentally stimulating and so tough,” Heck mentioned. “And I really like the problem of it.”
Heck spent practically all day, day by day on the course honing her recreation, sacrificing social occasions reminiscent of sleepovers and summer season camps. She had a transparent aim.
“I keep in mind once I was 4 years previous, individuals used to ask, ‘What do you wish to be if you develop up?’” Heck mentioned. “I’d at all times say skilled golfer and everybody sort of laughed at me, they usually thought it was cute. However in my thoughts, it was simply by no means a query.”
In 2017, at age 15, Heck certified for the U.S. Girls’s Open at Trump Nationwide Golf Membership in New Jersey. The youngest participant within the area, she did extra than simply present up – she made the lower and completed T33.
Her path to skilled golf was on observe, however a again harm throughout her junior yr of highschool modified her life.
“With out golf I noticed I actually didn’t know who I’m,” Heck mentioned. “Having to place the golf equipment away I had a full-on id disaster, like, what am I with out this recreation?”
Heck mentioned she grew to become depressed. Even when she returned to golf just a few months later throughout her senior yr, it wasn’t the identical. Some days she didn’t wish to get away from bed or do something in any respect.
In 2019, in the course of the fall of her senior yr, Heck represented the US within the Junior Solheim Cup at Gleneagles in Scotland. As a part of the expertise, the junior U.S. workforce met with that yr’s American Solheim Cup workforce, which included gamers reminiscent of Lexi Thompson and Nelly Korda.
“She spoke about what it means to symbolize your nation and I used to be simply starry-eyed, jaw on the bottom. It simply revived me.” – Rachel Heck
Whereas her teammates flocked to the skilled golfers, Heck wasn’t having enjoyable. She says she was at her low level and didn’t even wish to be there. However then a visitor speaker took the stage: Nora Tyson, a retired U.S. Navy veteran who commanded the Third Fleet from 2015-2017. Tyson was the primary lady to command a Navy ship fleet.
“She spoke about what it means to symbolize your nation and I used to be simply starry-eyed, jaw on the bottom,” Heck mentioned. “It simply revived me.”
After Tyson’s speech, it was time for the workforce image. Whereas Heck’s teammates rushed to be subsequent to their favourite gamers, Heck went straight to Tyson.
“She appeared me within the eye and mentioned, ‘In case you’re searching for an indication, that is it,’” Heck mentioned.
She’d discovered her calling. As a Stanford freshman, Heck began the four-year ROTC program. She mentioned that when she began this system, she didn’t have plans to complete it. Having to steadiness golf, lecturers and the navy, Heck needed to verify she appreciated the work first. And because it turned out, she liked it.
“Golf is so particular person,” Heck mentioned. “Being part of the navy representing and preventing in your nation, you’re such a small a part of one thing a lot larger than your self.”
Her golf was going very nicely, too. As a freshman, she gained six tournaments, together with the primary NCAA particular person title in Stanford ladies’s golf historical past. She additionally gained the Annika Award, which is given to the very best feminine Division I golfer. Heck was additionally a part of the successful 2021 U.S. Curtis Cup workforce and an NCAA Championship workforce with Stanford as a sophomore.
However Heck subsequently encountered harm and sickness, forcing her to overlook a lot of her junior and senior seasons. Throughout her senior yr, Stanford coach Anne Walker sat her down after yet one more unpromising MRI on her shoulder.
“She’s like, ‘Hey Rachel, you’ve had a tremendous profession. Why don’t you simply name it,’” Heck recalled. “I feel it was arduous for different individuals to see me simply in a lot ache and sort of depressing on a regular basis.”
By now Heck had realized that life as an expert golfer was not for her, however she’d labored too arduous to easily hand over. She needed to play. She needed to win.
And she or he did. Taking part in within the anchor match of the 2024 NCAA Division I Girls’s Golf Championship, Heck defeated UCLA’s Kate Villegas to clinch Stanford’s second NCAA Championship in three years and third total.
“I nonetheless can’t consider that occurred,” Heck mentioned. “That felt like a storybook ending. I couldn’t have written it any higher myself.”
After graduating from Stanford final yr, Heck labored as an analyst for funding agency KKR till June of this yr, leaving to pursue extra Air Pressure assignments.
“That’s the place my coronary heart was and I needed to present that every thing I had,” she mentioned.
Whereas Heck hasn’t performed a lot golf since graduating from Stanford, she hopes to play extra sooner or later and qualify for USGA championships. However her precedence is the navy, and he or she hopes her work leads her to exploring locations reminiscent of Africa, Europe and Asia.
Heck works as a public affairs officer within the Air Pressure. She focuses on telling the general public what the Air Pressure is doing and why. She maintains media and neighborhood relationships, however one in all her favourite elements is telling the tales of different navy members.
“I get to go play reporter and interview individuals and ask about their lives and what they do and what their work means to them,” Heck mentioned.
Whereas Heck hasn’t performed a lot golf since graduating from Stanford, she hopes to play extra sooner or later and qualify for USGA championships. However her precedence is the navy, and he or she hopes her work leads her to exploring locations reminiscent of Africa, Europe and Asia.
“The navy versus the LPGA is my chosen technique to see the world,” Heck mentioned.
Heck’s chosen path is a superb instance of what the Annika Inspiration Award seeks to focus on, Sörenstam mentioned.
“It’s so vital for all these gifted younger women to appreciate that there’s a lot on the market for them,” she mentioned. “If we’re sincere about it, it’s very arduous to make it as an expert golfer. Not all our alumnae will play professionally, and that’s simply superb. We simply need them to work arduous in no matter career they select and to be comfortable.”
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