Forever Pirates -- Myoung Kim

Our next Forever Pirates feature is written by former men's golfer Myoung Kim, who played for the Pirate men's golf program from 2017-18.

The two years I spent on Orange Coast College were an unforgettable memory for me.

The Summer of 2016, I moved from Princeton, New Jersey to achieve one of my goals at the time: To play for a NCAA Division I University. However, Since I just got to the United States from South Korea  and had no credentials on who I was, it wasn't something I could have achieve in a short amount of time.

So, after talking to my parents, we decided to go to a junior college and transfer after two years. And that is why I became a Pirate. But it surprises people that Orange Coast College was NOT my first pick.

At the time, I had just arrived in the U.S. and had no clue on what schools to contact. In fact, I didn't even know what a junior college was! So, I had to do some research and after a while, I found out that there were quite a few in Orange County (The reason why I chose Orange County was mostly because of the weather but also there wasn't that much of a choice).

My #1 pick was IVC (Irvine Valley College), #2 was Riverside, #3 was Saddleback and finally #4 was OCC. The reason why I made this list was because I saw OCC being the top of all JC's and thought that I had a better chance of playing in the other schools.

So, I emailed the IVC coach first. I waited and waited and waited. But there was no response. So then, I emailed the Riverside coach the same happened. Then, I emailed the Saddleback coach and guess what, No response. So basically, I had been rejected three times already and my confidence level was rock bottom.

With very low hope, I emailed Coach (Sean) Collins and surprisingly he replied to me back within couple of hours. I was so happy!! OCC was where I wanted to go the most and I was able to go. I think this was fate!

So, with that, our family drove our minivan from New Jersey to Costa Mesa. That was a fun drive … not really.

So, we arrived in Costa Mesa and I met Coach Collins for the first time. He was awesome! I never thought that I would respect someone as much as Coach. He was very strict but in a good way. He was also hilarious and taught me a lot of good things in both golf and life.

We used to have morning practices at 6 a.m. (5 a.m. during non-daylight savings time) and the whole team played together. We had days where it was raining, or it was freezing in the morning, but no one missed practice. And I think the reason why we didn't miss practice was because of how we respected coach and his program, and we all wanted to get better so that we could possibly have a chance of winning a state championship for him.

Both of my two years in OCC were amazing. But if I had to choose one year that was significant, it probably was my freshman year. I didn't have a great start of my freshman year … I hurt both of my wrists and was in pain every time we played. But I fought through and my teammates backed me up as well. We were able to win the Orange Empire Conference, we came in third at the Southern California Regionals and we finished third in the state as a team. Obviously, we wanted to win a state championship for Coach Collins, but we couldn't. That was my only regret I have in my OCC years. But other than that, it couldn't have been a better two years of my life. 

After graduating OCC, I had an opportunity to play at a higher level of golf at CSU Chico with a scholarship. And after a semester and a half (COVID-19 Pandemic), playing at Division II level golf, I named the California Collegiate Athletic Association Newcomer of the Year,  first-team, All-Conference honors, and an honorable mention selection on this year's All-American Team. And now I have transferred to play for Grand Canyon University, (Division I) and I can't thank Coach Collins and Orange Coast College enough!