By FREDDY GONZALEZ
Staff Writer
RIO HONDO — For the past few years, Oscar Alaniz has been the face of Rio Hondo’s golfing program.
Through hard work and perseverance, Alaniz achieved a lot during his high school athletic career. And on Tuesday at the Rio Hondo cafeteria, that hard work paid off as he signed a letter of intent to play golf for Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas, which is located northeast of Tyler.
In front of family, friends and coaches, Alaniz made the commitment that has been a long time in the making.
“Today means a lot because I’ve been playing golf basically my entire life and it finally paid off. I get to play college golf,” he said. “They really tried to recruit me hard. They were the ones constantly calling me back, emailing me and just checking up on me, and just always keeping track on how I was playing.”
Rio Hondo head golf coach Andy Alvarez was pleased with Alaniz’s accomplishment.
“Oscar’s got great talent in golf and I’ve always known he was going to excel in the sport, and people were going to be looking for him,” Alvarez said. “Oscar wanted to go somewhere where he fits in and that school (Jarvis Christian College) was the right school for him.”
Despite have a full schedule playing golf and keeping up with his studies, Alaniz also found time to help coach Alvarez recruit players for the program.
“Oscar’s been playing golf since he was little and a lot of the kids that he grew up with have only known him as a golfer, and that helped since he’s kind of been my helper recruiting golfers and getting other players to come out and play golf,” Alvarez said.
And Alaniz has proven himself to be a power on the golf course as well.
As a freshman and a sophomore, Alaniz won consecutive district titles, while being a runner-up his junior and senior seasons.
This season, Alaniz qualified for the Region IV-4A tournament just as he has for the fourth straight year. However, last season he was not able to compete at regionals due to a nagging ACL injury.