Hampton grad Calen Cummins leads Westminster golf to best finish at NCAA finals

Calen Cummins brought modest expectations to Westminster when he arrived at the middling NCAA Division III golf program.

The 2019 Hampton graduate had shot “in the 100s” as a ninth-grader and never advanced past WPIAL sectionals during his four years as a Talbot. Westminster was without a conference title since 2005 and had reached the NCAA championships only once in program history.

But Cummins already has his name in the Titans’ record books following a historic 2021 season.

“Going into college, honestly, I did not expect any of this from golf,” he said. “I was just kind of going there to play. After this year, I realized we are a good group of golfers and we can compete. It makes it way more enjoyable.”

Cummins, a sophomore, led the Titans to a ninth-place finish at the 37-team NCAA Division III Championship on May 11-14 at Oglebay Resort in Wheeling, W.Va., the school’s best-ever showing.

Cummins fired a career-low 69 on the final day and placed 26th in the 191-player field with a four-day score of 15-over 298. It was the best individual NCAA championship finish in Titans’ history.

“It was an awesome year,” Cummins said. “Nationals was an incredible experience. …We did it as a team, and I put up a great score personally. It was my lowest score ever, and what a better day to do it than on Day 4 of the national championship.”

Cummins wasn’t the only ex-Talbot who helped his team to a strong showing. Ben Huber, a senior at Carnegie Mellon, was part of the Tartans’ fourth-place finish. Huber shot 36-over 319 for the four days, taking 93rd place.

Cummins carried an 18-hole average of 76.7 this season for Westminster, which won the Presidents’ Athletic Conference title for the first time in 16 years and was No. 17 in the final Golfstat.com NCAA D-III rankings.

“Cal is one of the best teammates I’ve ever had,” Westminster senior and North Hills graduate Jonny Stuckert said. “He’s easy to get along with. Nobody dislikes him. He’s a great leader, by his actions.”

Cummins has come a long way from the “little, skinny guy” who missed the cut as a Hampton freshman but was offered the last spot on the JV roster only after another player quit.

Back then, he admittedly was not very good.

“Freshman year when I tried out, I was shooting in the 100s,” he said. “I didn’t even make the team. I guess right after that, I realized I had to get serious.”

He quit lacrosse to focus on golf, steadily improved and found a home at Westminster, the 1,300-student school 50 miles north of Pittsburgh where his mom, Kathy, had attended. There was another draw, too. Westminster golf coach Matt Torrence is a former Hampton golf and baseball coach, and Cummins used to caddy for Torrence at Wildwood Golf Club.

It turned out to be a perfect match.

Cummins began lifting weights and added 35 pounds of muscle to his now 5-foot-10, 165-pound frame. He tied for sixth at the PAC Fall Championships as a freshman, but then the pandemic nixed his 2020 spring season and his sophomore fall season.

During the downtime, Cummins practiced his swing, which Torrence had tweaked in the winter of 2019.

“(The shutdown) was actually good for me because I had all that time to work on my new swing,” Cummins said. “Ever since then, I’ve never played golf better in my life.”

Cummins hopes to compete in the 36-hole U.S. Amateur Championship qualifier July 6-7 at Sunnehanna Country Club in Johnstown. He needs to lower his handicap by one-tenth, to 2.4, by the June 23 deadline to qualify.

“It would be an awesome experience to play in that,” he said. “Who knows? If I play my best golf, who knows where it could take me. Right now, that’s kind of in my sight, getting qualified for that and seeing what I can do.”

Considering he has gone from shooting triple-digit scores in his first tryout to leading a top-10 team at the NCAA Division III championships, anything is possible.

“My hobbies now are golf and working out, and it really has paid off,” he said. “I can look back and see that I used to shoot (in the 100s) — it’s not even that long ago, what six years ago? — and now I’m shooting 69. That’s crazy.”