CAA HONORS TOP WOMEN’S GOLF PERFORMANCES FOR MARCH

RICHMOND, Va. (March 19, 2008) – The Colonial Athletic Association has recognized three women’s golfers for their outstanding play during tournaments in later February and early March.

Georgia State junior Anna Scott (Consett, England/Durham Sixth Form Centre) received CAA Women’s Golfer of the Week accolades for the week ending March 4. The junior posted a consistent performance at the SunTrust Lady Gator Invitational with rounds of 72, 73 and 74 to finish tied for 12th (219, +9). This was her fourth top-15 finish of the season.

Towson freshman Sara Eichelberger (Rochester, N.Y./Nazareth Academy) claimed CAA Women’s Golfer of the Week honors for the week ending March 11. Eichelberger led the Tigers to its first team title in the two-year history of the program with a score of 162 for a third place finish in the individual standings. The rookie shot an 83 in the opening round and finished the tournament with an 82 in the final round. This was her third top finish for the Tigers of the season.

Old Dominion senior Meghan Schaefer (Union, Ky./Larry A. Ryle) collected CAA Women’s Golfer of the Week honors for the week ending March 18. The senior placed fifth at the Eastern Kentucky El Diablo Intercollegiate with a score of 234 (77-78-79). Schaefer helped the Lady Monarchs to a seventh place finish in the 54-hole tournament. The senior currently leads the Lady Monarchs with a 79.5 stroke average after two events this spring.

Former RVGA leader dies here

By Randy King
981-3126

The Roanoke Valley golf community has lost one of its most faithful servants.

George Edward May, who served as chairman of the Roanoke Valley Golf Association for 30 years, died Wednesday night from an apparent heart attack at his Salem home.

May, 62, taught advanced math classes for 24 years at Salem High.

The Martinsville native also taught at Martinsville High (1967-76) and James River High (1977-83).

Rob Landis, May's close friend and frequent golfing partner, said Thursday that he knew something was awry when May didn't show for their Wednesday night fall ritual of dinner and then attending the Salem High Boosters Club meeting.

"Every Wednesday, we do dinner at 6 o'clock and the Salem Boosters at 7," Landis said. "George and I spent the last 14 years going to every Salem football game, home and away, then we always went together on Wednesdays to go watch the game all over again. George is always prompt, always early, so I knew something was wrong. I decided to go over to [his] house and found him. A neighbor said they saw him out walking his dog at 20 minutes of 6, and I was there at 10 after 6."

Those on the local golf scene will remember May as a jovial gentleman who gave up much of his free time to run the RVGA tournaments.

"Oh, George always had a story," Landis said. "Everyone in golf around here must have heard that story about him beating Dan Keffer back in the 1980s in the old Valley Amateur about 15 times. Until this day, he's smiling about the day he beat Dan Keffer."

The late Keffer was the 1981 runner-up in the State Amateur and one of the better golfers in Roanoke for decades.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salem. May was preceded in death by his wife, Linda, and daughter, Lauren. His surviving family includes his daughter, Mary Kathryn May.

Women's Golf Finishes 13th At Weather-Shortened Cuthbert Cup

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. - The final round of the Cuthbert Cup was cancelled due to inclement weather, leaving the Richmond women's golf team in 13th place in their spring 2008 season opener.

The Spiders had cut 18 strokes off of their first-round score on Tuesday, shooting a 318 to pull within four strokes of 12th place. Richmond finished the tournament at 654.

Spiders sophomore Anne Sprick and freshman Jillian Fraccola tied for 53rd at 162. Fraccola shot a 4-over-par 76 on the Kiawah Island Resort's Osprey Course Monday, while Sprick shot a 5-over 77.

Senior Alex Latimer finished 57th at 166. She shot an 85 in the second round after an 81 on Monday. Freshman Christina Gray tied for 58th at 167 after shooting an 82 in the second round. Sophomore Lauren Folgosa tied for 60th at 168, after carding an 83 on Tuesday.

The Spiders have almost a month off before returning to action at the William & Mary Invitational, March 22-23 at Fords Colony Golf Club in Williamsburg.

Radford Men's Golf Improves

BUIES CREEK, N.C.—Radford men’s golf improved to finish in fourth place at the Lonnie D. Small Invitational, moving up five spots from its day-one ninth place finish. The Highlander shot a 592 (303-289), an improvement of 14 strokes.

RU senior Hampton Ballard (Pearisburg, Va.) and junior Chris Dillow (Bland, Va.) tied for 15th overall. Ballard shot a 147 (74-73) and Dillow moved up seven strokes to also finish with a 147 (77-70). Senior Nick Little (Crozet, Va.) shot a 148 (75-73) to tie for 21st overall. Sophomore Sean Goshert (Conway, S.C.) finished with a 152 (79-73) to tie for 36th. Sophomore Kyle Bailey’s (Fincastle, Va.) shot a 154 (77-77) to tie for 46th overall.

Host Campbell won the event with a 583 (294-289) and USC Upstate Josh Gallman fired a 141 (69-72) to take medalist honors.

The RU men’s team next plays starting March 31 at the Wofford Invitational.

A golfer's different strokes

NATURAL BRIDGE -- Like the majority of the members of The Vista Links, Bobby Brads' official United States Golf Association handicap can be found in the clubhouse computer of the Buena Vista golf course.

"I have about a 24 handicap right now," Brads, a retired 65-year-old from Natural Bridge, confirmed Friday.

Then there is Brads' other handicap. This one isn't sanctioned by the USGA or anyone else.

It's right in front of your eyes. This golfer has only one arm.

As Bill "Sugarbear" Clark will tell you, that's what is called a real handicap.

"People who don't know Bobby, they'll stop and look and they'll kind of say, 'Look at that guy over there, he's got one arm and he's playing,'" said Clark, one of Brads' frequent playing partners.

"Then they'll watch him, and he very seldom disappoints them. He usually hits it pretty doggone decent. Bobby has got a little hot dog in him. He puts the pressure on himself a little bit when somebody starts watching. It makes him play a little bit better, looks like to me."

Clark will attest to that all the way to the 19th hole. Twenty-six days ago, he saw something he had never witnessed in all his years of playing golf. He watched somebody make a hole-in-one. And it took the only one-armed golfer he's ever seen -- not to mention heard of -- to make the ace.

After Clark and his other playing partner, fellow club member Mark Rogers, had barely missed the green with their tee shots from the longer white markers, Brads stepped to the senior tee and momentarily pondered his club selection for the 103-yard hole.

"I asked Bill, 'You think I can get a 9-iron over there?'" Brads said. "Well, he never said nothing. So I went over there and hit the 9-iron.

"The ball hit about two feet in the short cut around the front of the green, and I knew it was going to be close to the pin. And the ball just kept going and going, and it curved right to the hole. When it fell in the hole, all I remember is my 9-iron went flying up in the air!"

Clark said he and Rogers couldn't have been "more tickled" had one of their balls found the cup in a single blow.

"When Bobby made the ace, I jumped out of the cart and went over to him to give him a high-five," the gregarious Clark said. "Of course, Bobby had to take the club and sit it on the ground and lean it up against his leg in order to give me a high-five. I couldn't have picked a better fellow to see my first hole-in-one with.

"You know, I didn't have a real good day that day, but he and I shot the same score and I said, 'Bobby, I've got two arms and shot a 91. And here you've got one arm and shoot a 91, and had a hole-in-one doing it.'

"I'm telling you, it was some incredible stuff."

Who needs two?

Sure, Brads would love to be like the rest of the 99.99 percent -- and how many other 9s possibly needed to be strung to the right of the decimal point -- of the world's population that takes on life every day with two arms.

But he's got only one. He lost his left arm at age 24 in 1966, when it was cut off in a freakish accident at the Big Island paper mill. His arm was severed instantaneously when it got caught up in one of the ropes required to operate the mill's paper machine.

"The rope hung up and the slack came across another roller that was above my head and it got around my arm," said Brads, who almost 42 years later still vividly recalls the mishap. "When the slack went out of the rope, that's when it jerked me off the floor -- probably some two to three feet in the air -- and it just jerked the arm right out of the socket. Just that quick, it was gone!"

Brads said he would have likely bled to death that night if not for a first-aid member working at the mill, who was trained enough to know how to limit his blood loss.

"Death was close by," Brads said. "I'm only sitting here because the good Lord chose to answer my prayers that evening."

Susan Brads had married her Parry McCluer High sweetheart in 1962 and was at the couple's Glasgow home that night with their two young children, then 3-year-old David, and 1-year-old Tracy.

She thought he was going to die, she said.

"Bobby had lost so much blood," Susan Brads said. "But he made it somehow. But you know what, he accepted it, and I did, too. It just wasn't anything to do but go forward. We had kids. It was the only thing we could do."

A week later, Bobby Brads left the hospital. He was back on the job at the mill three weeks later, performing a less precarious job. He proceeded to toil for 38 more years at the mill before retiring Dec. 7, 2006.

A good-natured man who loves a good joke, Brads said he never let the loss of his arm beat him down.

"There's always somebody who is worse off than what you are," Brads said. "If you look around ... your eyes open up when things happen to you and you see other things that are worse off than what you are. I'm just glad I'm alive."

Getting hooked on golf

Funny thing, but Bobby Brads said he never once thought about ever holding a golf club when he had two arms and hands. However, two years after the accident, some of his buddies at the mill asked him to go with them to play golf. Never one to back off from a challenge, Brads took them up on the offer.

"They said, 'Let's go play golf,'" he recalled with a snicker. "They said you need to play left-handed, that you're going to have to hit the ball with your lead arm. Well, I had always swung things right-handed. So I borrowed some left-handed clubs and the ball went everywhere. I just couldn't hit it. It didn't work."

Soon thereafter, Brads purchased a set of old right-handed clubs and basically learned how to play from trial and error with a cast of friends at Botetourt Country Club in the late 1960s and early '70s. He developed a unique swing set-up in which he stands with his body basically facing the target and strikes the ball in what Clark described "much like a guy swinging a tennis racquet."

Off or on the course, Brads hasn't stopped swinging and having fun since. He routinely plays golf three times a week during the season with a pack of buddies. The best score he's ever carded was a 79 at Ivy Hill in Forest in the early 1990s. These days, he said he routinely shoots about 90, give or take a few shots.

"I've played golf all over the place," Brads said. "A bunch of us out of Buena Vista and Lexington, and people all the way to New York, go to Pinehurst [N.C.] every June for four days. I'm just one of the gang, just one of the redneck boys. I'm holding my own, though.

"I'm competitive on the course. I don't care who sees me play. I just say, 'Here I am, and if you don't like what you see, then you can leave.'"

Brads was in stitches as he recounted a story in which one of his old mill buddies brought a friend from Bedford to join him for a threesome one day.

"I didn't beat the guy from the mill because he was a pretty good golfer, but I beat the other guy," a guffawing Brads recalled. "The guy from the mill, Dennis, told me the next time I saw him that the other guy told him going up the road, 'Ain't this a hell of a note? I let a one-armed guy whip me!'"

Just think if everyone else at the club had to play with one arm. Clark said he wanted no part of that game.

"If we all had one arm, Bobby would beat the tar out of all of us," said Clark, his deep voice rising in tone. "Shoot, he would take all our money ... in a heartbeat."

Former RVGA leader dies here

The Roanoke Valley golf community has lost one of its most faithful servants.

George Edward May, who served as chairman of the Roanoke Valley Golf Association for 30 years, died Wednesday night from an apparent heart attack at his Salem home.

May, 62, taught advanced math classes for 24 years at Salem High.

The Martinsville native also taught at Martinsville High (1967-76) and James River High (1977-83).

Rob Landis, May's close friend and frequent golfing partner, said Thursday that he knew something was awry when May didn't show for their Wednesday night fall ritual of dinner and then attending the Salem High Boosters Club meeting.

"Every Wednesday, we do dinner at 6 o'clock and the Salem Boosters at 7," Landis said. "George and I spent the last 14 years going to every Salem football game, home and away, then we always went together on Wednesdays to go watch the game all over again. George is always prompt, always early, so I knew something was wrong. I decided to go over to [his] house and found him. A neighbor said they saw him out walking his dog at 20 minutes of 6, and I was there at 10 after 6."

Those on the local golf scene will remember May as a jovial gentleman who gave up much of his free time to run the RVGA tournaments.

"Oh, George always had a story," Landis said. "Everyone in golf around here must have heard that story about him beating Dan Keffer back in the 1980s in the old Valley Amateur about 15 times. Until this day, he's smiling about the day he beat Dan Keffer."

The late Keffer was the 1981 runner-up in the State Amateur and one of the better golfers in Roanoke for decades.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salem. May was preceded in death by his wife, Linda, and daughter, Lauren. His surviving family includes his daughter, Mary Kathryn May.