When I was a junior in high school, I received a letter from a small private college in the middle of nowhere Ohio inviting me to tour their campus and talk to the golf coach about continuing to golf throughout college.

I was on the golf team for all four years in high school. It was one of the biggest parts of my time there, and I wouldn't change that for anything.

However, I also don't regret that I didn't go on to play golf in college.

College sports are very, very different from those in high school. When I talked to a college coach, he listed off daily practices and lifting sessions, weekly meetings with a coach to address my grades, and tournaments almost every weekend, in both the fall and the spring.

High school golf was just practice and matches throughout the week during the fall, and even in high school, I put a lot of stress on myself to improve my scores and to fix the stupid things I did that I shouldn't have done during matches. If I already put this much pressure on myself at a lower level, and only during one semester, then the amount of pressure I would put on myself to be better would only increase, and that was something that I couldn't do to myself.

I also knew that I wanted to go to college and to feel like I was at college.

The university that I could golf at was about the same size as my high school, and one of the women that I golfed with during high school was already signed to go there. I felt like if I chose a college based on one activity from high school, I'd be giving up so much, and I wouldn't feel like I was making changes in my life, but trying to keep everything the same from high school to college.

I also knew that during college, I wanted to be able to work and also join clubs that were different from what I did during high school, but with signing on to golf, I felt that I could only do that and attend classes.

When I was looking at colleges, I was torn between the Ohio State University, or Heidelberg University, where I could golf. I felt like I would be losing more in going to a college solely to golf than I would by not continuing my high school sport in order to go to a Division 1 school.

In this past year alone, I've had so many experiences that I never would've imagined having, and I would definitely regret it if I had made any other choice. Ohio State has been a wonderful place, my new home, and I have never once regretted my choice to stop playing golf competitively.

Looking back on it, I made the right decision. While I miss the people I was playing with and the fun times we had, there is so much that I don't miss. Over the summer I go and help out with the golf practices for my old golf team, and I golf with my family.

So, while I'm still playing the sport, it's much more casually, and it is significantly less stressful.

I couldn't imagine my life any other way. I don't miss the stress, and I can't imagine trying to fit such a large time commitment into my life at college when I struggle to fit in everything I want to do without a collegiate level sport.