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UGA WOMEN’S PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Kate Walker
After becoming the first high school student in more than a decade to win the Women’s Player of the Year (presented by Primo) award, Kate Walker has a lot of people to thank.
Utah Golf Association administrators created a Girls’ Junior State Amateur. Her parents, Jason and Kara Walker, spent a big chunk of their summer traveling to Northern Utah.
Also deserving credit is Walker’s future Utah Tech teammate, Samantha Phelan, for overtaking Westminster University’s Ashley Lam on the last nine holes of the Mary Lou Baker Open. With a closing birdie, Southern Utah’s Siriporn Luangnam tied Lam for second place among amateurs, also affecting the points allotment.
Kate Walker is a senior at Crimson Cliffs High School in Washington, Utah.
In the end, though, this variable is undeniable: Walker beat Lam (1 up) in the semifinals of the Women’s State Amateur.
If that outcome were reversed, Lam would have been the Women’s Player of the Year. Walker, a senior at Crimson Cliffs High School in Washington, Utah, posted 111 points to Lam’s 108.5. Walker earned 75 points for her Women’s State Am runner-up finish, 30 for making the UGA Girls’ Junior State Am quarterfinals and six for a 10th-place showing in the UGA Winterchamps.
As a Bingham High senior, Sirene Blair won the first UGA Women’s Player of the Year award in 2012. Since then, seven-time winner Kelsey Chugg and college golfers have ruled the competition.
Walker’s award is a tribute to her recovery ability, in multiple ways. The enduring image is the Women’s State Am, as she went into match play as the No. 29 seed after posting a 78 in the qualifying round. She rediscovered her swing and beat three outstanding junior golfers, plus Lam, at Wasatch Mountain Golf Course.
“I just told myself I was lucky to progress to match play and needed to play each game on its own and not worry about my stroke-play score,” she said later. “I don’t know why, exactly, but I had a lot of confidence in my game as (match play) started. I spent some time on the range, fixed some things up and got ready for the rest of the week. I knew that I had my game and my skills in the right place to beat whoever I was matched up with, until Arden.”
That would be Arden Louchheim, who won the title. Even so, Walker made her mark.
In the Class 4A state high school tournament, just three weeks after an auto accident left her with a broken finger, Kate Walker finished second and Crimson Cliffs won the team title.
In the bigger picture of the 2025 season, there was the April auto accident in St. George that left her with a broken little finger on her right hand. Her determination to play in the Class 4A state high school tournament three weeks later, as she finished second and Crimson Cliffs won the team title, obscured the effects.
“There’s a lot of things that are off, ever since that crash,” she told broadcaster Rod Zundel in July. “It took a lot of hard work and time to get back to where I was.”
She got there, and beyond.
2025 UGA Women’s Player of the Year profile written by Fairways Media senior writer, Kurt Kragthorpe. Photography by Fairways Media/Garrit Johnson.