During his four-year golfing career at Wayland Baptist University, Kevin Stinson always looked forward to attempting one particular shot at a course in La Veta, Colo.
“Wayland hosted a tournament there, and on the very first tee shot – a par-5 – there were two lines you could take. There was an easy line and a real aggressive one,” he recalls.
Stinson said he always took the aggressive line.
“It usually worked out pretty well,” he said.
For that matter, so did Stinson’s entire WBU golfing career. So well, in fact, that the three-time NAIA All-American and member of the 2007 national runner-up team is the first Pioneer golfer to be inducted into the Wayland Baptist Athletics Hall of Honor.
Not bad for someone who didn’t get serious about golf until age 16 and who wound up at Wayland – almost 2,000 miles from his home in Mission, British Columbia, Canada – as a result of a golfing buddy.
“I was into soccer until I was 16, so I started playing golf late. My grandmother (Mary Stinson) and dad (Tom Stinson) played golf a lot, and I played some, but just casually…for fun,” Stinson explains.
He showed lots of promise, however, and when friend Jeff Dagg attended Wayland to play golf, Stinson followed him a year later.
“Jeff and I played a lot of junior golf together, and I didn’t have much of a background to go to a bigger school,” Stinson said.
Dry, windy West Texas definitely is much different than the lush, mountainous region where Stinson came from, but he took to Wayland right away.
“The best part was the people. They were so welcoming,” he said. “I still have friends there and we still keep in touch. That’s what kept me coming back.”
Upon his arrival in 2005, Stinson proved to be a pivotal part of a Wayland men’s golf program that began establishing itself as an NAIA power. Before Stinson, the Pioneers had qualified for two NAIA National Championships since the program’s inception in the mid-1990s, but never finished higher than 14th. Stinson’s freshman season, Wayland placed sixth before finishing an all-time best second in 2007.
“My first two years (the team) was very deep,” said Stinson, whose teammates on the national runner-up team were Dagg, Brent Kirstein, J.J. Brumley and Mikel Martinson. “We had some really good players.”
Not surprisingly, Stinson said the national runner-up finish his sophomore season, claimed at Indiana National Golf Club, is one of his fondest memories.
“OCU (Oklahoma City University) was the heavy favorite. They won six events that year and they thought they were going to win easily, but we were right with them the whole way. It was close. For us to be in there all the way to the end was a bit of a surprise.”
Stinson and the Pioneers returned to nationals, which moved to TPC Deere Run in Illinois, the following two seasons, placing fifth and 12th.
“We lost a lot of players” after his sophomore season, said Stinson, who finished his WBU career playing alongside fellow all-Americans Michael Loppnow and Bradley Sinnett.
“We had three really good players instead of five really good players,” he said.
Stinson’s best individual finish at nationals was 18th as a freshman in Olathe, Kan.
“I was a deer in the headlights my freshman year; I didn’t know what was going on. Then my last three years I put too much pressure on myself to play well.”
During his WBU career, Stinson was a part of nine tournament-winning teams, which at the time was the most successful run in school history.
“We were always the little school, always the underdog, and we fed off that,” he said. “We had some success early and just wanted to win, and found a way to do it. We never had the best facilities or best courses to practice on, but we had a good coach (Tom Harp) and believed in each other and believed in our team, and that’s how we got it done.”
As for his all-American honors, Stinson was honorable mention as a sophomore, second-team as a junior and first-team as a senior. The business administration major also earned academic all-American honors his senior year.
As a junior in 2008 he won the Grand Canyon Thunderbird Classic, shooting a 54-hole school record 11-under 205. Making that victory at Palm Valley Golf Club in Goodyear, Ariz., even more special was it happened on his birthday, plus the fact his mom, Janice, was there to witness it.
“That was a special one, for sure,” Stinson said.
Two of Stinson’s most memorable shots as a Pioneer were a double-eagle at Lubbock Country Club recorded during a pre-nationals practice round his junior year, and a drives on the aforementioned first hole in Colorado. He said WBU Vice-President of Enrollment Management Dr. Claude Lusk “always brings up that shot” when the two talk.
Since graduating from Wayland, Stinson – who lives half the year in Mission and the other half in Phoenix – has pursued a career as a professional golfer, playing two seasons in South Africa and four years on PGA Tour Canada. In 2014 he became the first WBU alum to play in a PGA Tour event when he teed it up at the Canadian Open.
“Just to get in it was a pretty good deal,” Stinson said.
The last couple of years the 30-year-old bachelor has played on the Vancouver Golf Tour, winning “a few times.” In 2015 he claimed the VGT’s Order of Merit as the top overall player.
“I’m doing OK.”
