Mia Duarte '25 Recruiting Profile

Hello! My name is Mia Duarte, I am a sophomore currently attending Canyon High School. I am on our golf team here at canyon playing varsity. I have been around the game of golf for as long as I can remember since my dad is a PGA professional teaching at Palos Verdes Golf Course.  I would say my dad is one of the biggest influences in my life regarding golf since he helped me and led me on the right path to learning how to love the game itself. Growing up with golf I feel helps you mature especially playing at such a young age since you are faced with these mental challenges helping you grow under pressure, learn how to deal with and improve from the bad days, and know how to celebrate the little victories. Golf has also taught me how to deal with emotions since golf is such a mental game I've adapted to the mindset of being able to recover from a bad shot instead of not being able to handle my emotions and letting them affect my whole game. I have found out how well I am under pressure and how I won't let me affect me when it matters most. In my high school career, I want to keep a 4.0 striving to achieve the best and taking rigorous classes while also balancing a social life of clubs and extra circulars. When I enter college, I want to major in psychology and become a Family Marriage Therapist getting my Ph.D. Getting to where I am I would not say was the straightest path it was most definitely a challenge during covid I lost all motivation to play, stopped playing in tournaments, and stopped practicing. As I fell into the deep black circle of online classes and staying at home I figured this isn't what I should be doing, so I stopped I started practicing and in the summer completed a total of 200 hours of golf, preparing and grinding for the High School season that lay ahead of me. One skill I have come to realize I have is being able to identify a problem in my swing and then fix it right away and adapt quickly. I would love to be recruited to a school off on golf because I want to play in collage and seek something out of the sport I've been playing all my life.