November 20, 2008 11:28 pm
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MOULTRIE — Colquitt County golfer Anna Leigh Keith made recruiting visits to Georgia, Auburn, Tulane, Vanderbilt and Kentucky.
She also had offers from a number of other top college women’s golf programs around the country, including Texas and Ohio State.
In the end, Keith chose to go to Nashville, where she can hear the best in country music when she is not striking and putting a golf ball for the Vanderbilt Lady Commodores.
Keith signed a letter of intent to attend Vanderbilt next year and put behind her an outstanding high school and junior golf career.
She is currently ranked No. 61 in the American Junior Golf Association’s Polo rankings and will be one of 78 girls from around the country to compete in the AJGA’s Polo Junior Golf Classic, which will begin Saturday and run through Nov. 28, at the Ginn Reunion Resort near Orlando.
Keith also has been named a member of the AJGA’s 2008 HP Scholastic Junior All-American Team.
That award is based not only on her performances on the fairways and greens, but also on her 97.83 grade point average and the No. 13 ranking in her Colquitt County High class of 472.
Also among her junior golf achievements is being named the Southern Junior Golf Tour’s Player of the Year in 2007.
She also qualified for the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship held last August in Eugene, Ore.
“She’s just what every coach wants,” Colquitt County High golf coach Donald Dale said. “She competes every time she plays. She’s the most dedicated girl I’ve ever coached and is as dedicated as any boy I’ve ever had.”
Dale calls her “a great ball-striker. She’s as good from tee to green as anyone I’ve had.
“If she improves on her putting — and she’s working on it — she has a chance to be a great player.”
Keith has been coached primarily by Bill Connally at Glen Arven Country Club in Thomasville and by Chan Reeves in Atlanta.
Dale said Keith’s outstanding performance this summer, which also included leading the Georgia team to a win in the Georgia/South Carolina team matches at Sea Island in July, impressed college coaches.
“She really had a great summer,” Dale said. “Coaches were all over her.”
It was Vanderbilt coach Greg Allen who finally was able to get Keith to leave Georgia.
Allen is in his second season as the coach at Vanderbilt after coaching the University of Arizona for seven years, winning the Pac-10 twice.
Vanderbilt made the NCAA Regional last spring. The 2008-2009 team has three seniors, giving Keith a chance to compete for spot as a freshman.
“I really liked the team and the coaches,” Keith said of her visit to the Vanderbilt campus. “And I love Nashville.”
She also said she wants play well enough to travel with the team as a freshman.
Vanderbilt also has signed Gabrielle Balit, originally from Montreal, Quebec, who currently attends Out of Door Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and Lauren Stratton of Spring Hill, Tenn., who won two high school championships in three years at Independence High.
Keith would like to win a state high school championship of her own next spring. She has finished second in the state Class AAAAA girls tournament twice.
Last May, she shot a 74 to finish just one shot back of Mill Creek’s Emily Berger.
She was this year’s Region 1-AAAAA girls tournament’s low medalist.
“She’s a great student, a great player and a wonderful Christian,” Dale said. “That says it all for me.”
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