Maxwell Skeel '20 Recruiting Profile

My primary athletic goal is to play intercollegiate golf at a level that challenges me on a regular basis. It is difficult to identify a specific level because of an unusual path to golf being my primary sport.  I grew up in a small town in Michigan and started playing house hockey at 7 years old. Over the years, I worked hard year round, and ultimately made a nationally competitive 15 and under AAA hockey team that had several players drafted and was nearly two hours from my home (four practices/week + games every weekend). Obviously this required total commitment from me and my family, and I hoped to play hockey in college. However, in my first game with the AAA team I tore my hip labrum in an awkward fall. This ultimately required surgical repair through a procedure known as surgical hip dislocation in order to repair a hip impingement.  The surgery was successful, but because of the timing of the surgery (it took a while to get diagnosed and was repaired in March of 2017) and subsequent recovery, I could no longer play an elite level of hockey.

However, this change in plans opened up the opportunity for me to become serious about golf. I have played golf since I was 6 years old and lettered in high school golf my freshman year. I was not able to play last year’s high school season because of my injury, but spent the fall and winter working on my game. I was fortunate to have access to Central Michigan University’s women’s golf team practice facility, and spent much of the winter there. The hard work has paid off so far in my junior high school season as I am the number 1 golfer on the team and finished 3rd out of 90 and 2nd out of 95 in my first two high school tournaments shooting 80 in both. In addition, I led the conference in lowest average score for the season this year, and our team won the league championship.  After the high school season I plan on playing summer tournaments to work on my game and continue to become comfortable with competitive golf.

Academically, I am not sure about what I want to major in, but education is important to me and I would like to attend an academically challenging school I have a 3.86 GPA and scored 1360 on the SAT.