DENNIS SILVA II | STAFF WRITER
MISSION — Not many athletes would pass up a full scholarship from Texas. But not many athletes are Sabina Peña, and to Peña no school is like TCU.
The Sharyland High senior signed Wednesday afternoon to play golf for the Horned Frogs. The decision was as easy as a 10-foot putt.
“A week and a half ago, I was leaving for a tournament in Florida and I got a call from the coach at UT,” Peña said during her signing ceremony at The Club at Cimarron, the course she grew up playing. “He offered a full ride, but I turned it down. I know my golf game and me belong at TCU.
“That’s where I’m hopefully going to develop into a professional.”
Peña started playing the sport at 10 years old, taking it up because she felt “left out” watching her older brother Jose star at it. She developed into a natural, gifted with a dominant swing. It is her ball-striking that attracted TCU coaches.
TCU first saw Peña at the Class 5A state tournament in 2013, where she finished in a tie for fourth, and then offered her in March of this year. That’s when Peña verbally committed, and then was confident putting pen to paper after her official visit last weekend.
“The treatment I got by their coach and how everybody welcomed me, I knew that’s where I wanted to be,” she said. “It was just so friendly. That’s an environment I want to be in.”
Peña was Sharyland High’s top player as a freshman and sophomore before she left the program after the pre-district tournament last season.
During that tournament, Peña’s mother Lucero said coaches from opposing schools chastised her daughter for playing ahead of the other girls and penalized her strokes for throwing her club.
“Coaches were going after her that last tournament,” Lucero said. “In the middle of the fairway, a coach went to Sabina and told her to wait for the other girls. It was unnecessary. She wasn’t in their way, she was just ahead. But we didn’t see support from her coach at Sharyland. The Sharyland coach did not do anything to stop it and we felt kind of betrayed. We decided it was enough.”
That tournament was the breaking point for Peña. Lucero said it was one of Peña’s teammates that turned her in for throwing the club. It was not the first time they felt a lack of support from coaches and teammates.
“Everyone was going against me because I was so good,” Peña said. “I wasn’t going to stick around for that. So I decided to leave.”
Carlos Espinosa, Peña’s mentor who attended the tournament as a parent and spectator, advised Peña through the situation. Lucero said the only support they received from Sharyland administrators was from athletic director Richard Thompson.
“I wish things would have been handled differently,” Espinosa said. “She’s done a fantastic job moving forward from adversity, and my hats off to her and her mom for the way they have handled it.”
Peña will not compete at Sharyland High this year. Instead, she plans to participate in six AJGA (American Junior Golf Association) tournaments, and hopefully win one, before going to TCU next year.
Peña credits the national tournaments, which she has competed in throughout her high school career, for exposing her to colleges like TCU, Texas and Arkansas, among others.
“I knew I would sign somewhere,” he said. “I just didn’t know where. Golf was a game that came naturally. I would just play and I’d practice. When you’re good, it’s hard to get better because it’s just a couple of strokes. It takes time. It’s a lot of hard work.
“And now all that has paid off. The first step is done.”