Sperry’s Connor Thomas
Connor Thomas knows golf can be equal parts laughter and pressure.
The Sperry High School junior said one of the things he values most about varsity golf is the balance his team strikes between keeping practice loose and staying focused on improvement. “I love how my teammates and I can joke around at practice but still be very serious and get work done to make ourselves and our team better,” Thomas said.
That mix of personality and purpose has helped shape Thomas into one of Sperry’s promising young golfers. He has played tournament golf off and on since he was 6 years old and now, at 17, he is working to keep building his game while helping show that Sperry can compete beyond its better-known sports.
“Being able to put my school out there as not just a football and wrestling school but that we can be good at other things too,” Thomas said, describing what motivates him when he tees it up for the Pirates.
Thomas said his grandfather — whom he calls “Pops” — first introduced him to the sport and continues to influence the way he approaches it. “My pops (grandpa) is the person who got me into golf,” Thomas said. “He is always trying to make me better in many ways, whether mentally or in how I play my game.”
That mental side remains one of the biggest challenges in golf, Thomas said. He said staying composed when a round starts going sideways is one of the toughest parts of the sport, a lesson that has translated beyond the course.
“Athletics has taught me how to be strong when things get hard,” Thomas said. “I know life isn’t easy so I feel like it correlates directly with how to handle life when things get tough.”
Thomas already has one memory that still drives him. As a sophomore, he nearly qualified for the state tournament and came within two strokes of advancing.
“I would say one of my favorite memories would be almost making it to state last year as a sophomore,” Thomas said. “The first round at regionals I shot the best round of my life at that point. I missed state by 2 strokes.”
He describes his irons as the strongest part of his game and his short game as the area that still needs the most work. Even so, Thomas is thinking long term. He hopes to play golf in college and believes the path forward will come into focus soon enough.
For now, he is still chasing lower scores, bigger moments and a chance to keep Sperry golf in the conversation.
