Ulrich is cool when numbers add up

Kansas Golf Foundation Junior Scholars: Aspen Ulrich

Kansas Golf Foundation scholar Aspen Ulrich likes numbers and when everything adds up. That equation probably led the Sylvan Grove 19-year-old to thinking about a career as a certified public

accountant.
   Ulrich is just a freshman at McPherson College, but it appears she’s already on the road to becoming a CPA.
   “I like the analytical side of it,” she admits. “If I see something with one number missing I have to fix it.”
   Ulrich, who comes from a central Kansas farming family, says she can see herself getting into financial advising as well and possibly give back to those who enjoy and share her small-town background.
   “I want to do some more financial planning-type things and go back to a small town or like a suburb where I can drive out to a small town and help the people there,” she says. “Because those people raised me and it makes more sense for me to come back and help them when I get older.”

Changing attitude about the game
   Some people love golf from the moment they are introduced to it – some, not so much. Ulrich is not ashamed to admit she really didn’t like golf as a child and only came back to it later when her father suggested it might be something she could play in high school.
   “I knew it would be a chance to spend time with him and I decided to practice golf a little bit,” she recalled.
   The industrious Ulrich even had to do some convincing of the school board to get her spot on a high school golf team.
   “I asked the local school board to create a co-op with a nearby high school so that I could play,” she says. “They said that I could play…I recruited one other girl to play and the two of us

and another girl went to practice with about 10 guys and we made it through our first year of golf. And it was probably my most favorite year of golf.”
   Class 1A Sylvan Unified High School and Lucas-Luray banded together to form one squad. According to Ulrich, they practiced at the sand green Luray Golf Course, but the two teams were then separated when it came time for regional and state events. Individually, Ulrich went on to win a different league’s tournament two straight seasons.
   “I learned the first day of practice, (coach) told us that golf was a gentleman’s game, and she didn’t care if we were girls or not,” says Ulrich, who also played volleyball and softball Sylvan High. “Because you have to be honest and we had to be honorable. If we hit the ball or we just scuffed the ball we had to say we did it anyway. I learned to have fun…it’s just a game and it’s not the end of the world if you don’t win.”
   Ulrich says she also gained valuable leadership skills on the golf team.
   “I had to step up and be a leader my junior year…we only had one senior boy, so I had to kind of lead the team as a junior girl and I was kind of a leader my senior year as well,” she says.

Certain college choice
   Ulrich, who was also a top-flight performer in forensics at Sylvan, says she chose a college as early as the summer of ninth grade.
   “I toured McPherson College and they were really personable and they told me they couldn’t offer me anything as a freshman…they gave me a cookie and told me to come back in four years,” she recalls. “And I said, ‘Okay, that’s where I’m going.’ And I stuck with it all four years in high school.”
   Ulrich maintains that was the right decision for her as she makes her way through her freshman year. She’s comfortable at the school and has already begun to help the administration find future students.
   “I’m working a lot with the admissions department and now I can recruit kids too,” she says.
   Along with her admissions department internship, Ulrich says she helps lead a bible study group at McPherson and she represents her dorm in student government.
   The young business student remains appreciative of the support she’s gotten from her KGF scholarship, one she became aware of when her grandmother saw a piece in a Quinter newspaper about that town’s Tim Roesch winning his.
   “This is the one scholarship, that if I didn’t get anything else, and I had to pay for school on my own through loans, I’m glad to get this one,” she says. “To know that my time playing golf was something worthwhile, because I’m not really great at any other sports… (receiving the KGS scholarship) was something that I was just really excited about.”