Overcoming Obstacles
By Haley Kammann | IG: @Haley.2023
My name is Haley Kammann. I have played golf since middle school and I play golf at Ohio Wesleyan University. Mental health has always been very important to me whether with my academics or athletics. I was adopted at birth. My biological mother has a learning disability and has struggled with her mental health for years.
I have the same learning disability as my birth mom, it’s called non-verbal learning disability. Basically, I learn slower than most people do and not only do I need things to be explained to me more than once but I also need them to be explained in a different way. Sometimes that needs to be in more of a visual way. Ever since I was young, I have had this learning disorder along with ADHD. During high school and now college I have struggled with anxiety, especially with athletics and academics. I would get overwhelmed when teeing off on the first hole in tournaments and when taking tests.
In golf, mental toughness plays a big role, which is something that I have battled with for years and will continue to do. If being mentally tough was easy then almost everyone would be good at it. It has taken years for me to truly understand that having a good attitude contributes to how I will perform on and off of the golf course. It has taken a long time for me to learn that there’s only so much that I can control, whatever is going to happen will happen. I have struggled with the mental aspect of golf for a long time. I used to think that my attitude didn’t matter and had nothing to do with how I would swing or how I would play but I was wrong. I have learned that nothing good can come from being negative and having a bad attitude will only make things worse.
Having a positive attitude doesn’t guarantee that I will play well, but I will almost always do better when I have a positive attitude compared to having a negative attitude. I started to play so much better when I worked on having a positive outlook on my swing, game, and even with school as well. Even if I just hit a bad shot, had a rough hole, or even a few rough holes, the next hole is a new hole, and another opportunity. You never know what will happen. I have learned that it’s okay to be upset about having a rough hole but I’m not going to let that ruin my round or get the best of me. I have spent a long time working on being able to move on and put the bad things behind me, not just with golf but with anything that I do in life will be a huge challenge that I will face.
As I was going into my sophomore year of high school with the COVID-19 pandemic, I learned that I truly loved golf and wanted to keep playing. During the pandemic, everything was shut down, and golf was one of the few things that I was able to do. The pandemic allowed me to work on being more mentally tough, with everything being online I got to play golf more and I realized that having a positive attitude is the biggest part of my game that I needed to work on if I wanted to get better.
Golf has taught me how to be more confident, believe in myself, and trust myself as well as my swing. In golf, I have faced challenges and setbacks, but I have worked hard to not let that mess with me emotionally which isn’t easy and has taken hard work. One of the best things about golf is it challenges me to come back from my mistakes. I have learned that I have to make mistakes in order to improve and learn from them. If mistakes aren’t made then I won’t know what to fix and work on to make sure that it doesn’t happen again and goes better next time. Bad shots happen in life and on the golf course. After experiencing both good and bad shots, I’ve learned that how I respond to the bad ones will determine my success. I’ve come to understand that I can’t control everything, but as long as I try my best, I should be proud of myself. It’s not easy but golf has taught me to never give up, even in the face of repeated failures.
During my senior year of high school my mental toughness was truly put to the test. It all started August 12, 2022 when I was at a tournament at the beginning of the season. I was walking up to my ball to hit my second shot on the first hole when my push cart started rolling down a hill very fast heading towards the woods. When I went to chase after it, I fell down the hill. My left ankle got injured and hurt for the entire round. I was in so much pain. I didn’t know at the time since I didn’t get my ankle checked out immediately but eventually I found out that it was worse than I thought, I had a hairline fracture and a deep bone bruise on my left ankle. I had to wear a brace all season which didn’t help. I struggled all season because I wasn’t getting any hip movement since it hurt everytime I tried to rotate. I needed to be able to put weight on my ankle and I couldn’t do that. I wanted to scream and cry every time I swung and walking up to the ball hurt so much. It took everything in me to not scream. It was hard to enjoy that sport that I was so passionate about when I was playing so badly due to all of the pain I was in.This injury made me want to go into mental health because I faced struggles not just physically but mentally as well.
I was at lunch one day my senior year of high school when my golf coach texted the entire team to come to the principal’s office immediately and he’s very chill so he wouldn’t have if it weren’t an emergency. I was the first one in the principal’s office with my coach and the principal. I looked at their faces and I will never forget how devastated they were. It was my senior night for golf and I was really looking forward to this. Every year they did a scramble with all four of the high schools in the district. We found out the day of senior night that it had been canceled and had to be rescheduled. We didn’t know at the time but later that night we found out that one of the golfers on the other team had taken her own life. I had played golf with her in middle school. This was very difficult for me to hear, mental health has always been very close to me and this life changing event changed my perspective. This is what inspired me to go into psychology on a mental health track specifically. This event was very eye opening for me.
I wanted to make more of an impact through mental health. My freshman year of college I joined a sorority. I joined Kappa Kappa Gamma, a sorority whose philanthropy supports Active Mind, a mental health organization. I want to make a difference as a mental health psychologist, and this is only the beginning.
Overall, I have learned that the mental aspect of golf is a battle that I will always face. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t make mistakes and learn from them. Having negative thoughts and complaining won’t accomplish anything. I have learned a lot with mental health from playing golf, knowing people who have struggled, and through my own experiences. I have struggled with my ADHD and learning disability since I was in first grade. It has taken a long time for me to learn that I can’t control the uncontrollable and I have to just let things happen. Going with the flow is not something that has come naturally to me but as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more mentally tough which has helped. At the end of the day, all that I can do is to try my best to have a good attitude and if I can do that then I’m proud of myself.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story, I hope that this helps other athletes in the future. I hope that you found my story as inspiring as I have found other athletes' stories.
