Faye Simon: Amy, I saw the video of you playing the 16th hole with Gary Woodland and I was and am impressed.
Amy Bockerstette: Thank you.
FS: How did you get started in golf?
AB: I started playing golf when I was 14 years old. My dad took me to a charity golf outing. He took me to lessons.
FS: You really liked it?
AB: Yes.
Joe Bockerstette: We had a charity scramble with her grade school, and we invited Amy to be the fourth in our group. I bought her a child’s seven iron. She hadn’t practiced. She hadn’t played before. She got on the course with us and hit the ball, and you could tell immediately that she had some ability to play golf.
FS: She hadn’t even had a lesson?
JB: No, she hadn’t had a single lesson. Afterwards, her mom, Jenny, suggested we put her in lessons. She’s been in lessons ever since.
FS: How often are the lessons?
AB: Three times a week.
FS: Amy, do you practice on your own between lessons?
AB: Yes.
FS: Do you practice with dad?
AB: Yeah.
FS: Is dad a good golfer?
AB: Yeah.
JB: We try to play once a week as a family. Jenny, Amy and I play when we can. Amy’s got a pretty busy tournament schedule. There’s always something going on, but absent another commitment, we try to play one day a weekend.
FS: Are you members of a golf club?
JB: We’re not. We play all around. Because of Amy playing in high school and then in college, we played many of the courses around Arizona.
FS: Amy, where did you go to college?
AB: Paradise Valley Community College.
FS: What was your major?
AB: Dance.
FS: Dance probably helps you be graceful in golf.
AB: Yeah.
JB: Plus, it’s good for conditioning. In high school and college, she had to walk the 18-hole course, pushing her bag in a pushcart. Those are generally five or six miles at a time, and tournaments were generally a couple of days.
FS: You are in really good shape, Amy.
AB: Yeah.
FS: Amy, what is your favorite thing about golf?
AB: My favorite thing about golf is hanging out with my teammates, meeting new people, and taking selfies.
FS: Do you have a favorite golf course, Amy?
AB: My favorite golf course is Pebble Beach.
JB: She got to play in a tournament there with her club sponsor. The highlight was making the birdie on hole 11, and big cheers.
FS: That’s exciting. What it was like playing the 16th hole with Gary Woodland?
AB: It was so much fun playing golf with Gary on the 16th hole. The crowd is cheering for me, clapping, waving to people, blowing kisses.
FS: What advice would you give to a new golfer, who’s not as good as you?
AB: Have fun.
JB: In 2019, we were playing a round of golf with a sports reporter in Cincinnati, since retired. When we got done with the round, he turned to Amy and said “Would you like me to give you any advice about golf?” Amy said “No, that’s okay.” Then he said “Well, do you have any advice for me?” She said “Yeah, hit the ball straight.”
FS: I love it. Tell me about your I GOT THIS Foundation.
AB: We started I GOT THIS Foundation on my 21st birthday. We started I GOT THIS Golf Academy to teach people with disabilities to learn to play golf.
FS: I saw you saying “I got this” at the golf tournament.
AB: I did.
JB: To be honest, that wasn’t a planned thing. It was just spontaneous for Amy to say that.
Since that video, that’s become kind of a mantra for her, and obviously became the name of the foundation.
FS: It’s perfect because it shows your confidence. “I Got This” is a great name for the foundation. Amy, who would you love to have in your dream golf foursome?
AB: Nick Jonas, Zac Efron, Grant Gustin, and Gary Woodland.
FS: How did you get connected with Gary Woodland and other professional golfers?
JB: You want me to take that?
AB: Go ahead.
JB: Gary had won the Waste Management Tournament the previous year. The Thunder-birds, who run the Waste Management (or WM Phoenix Open, now) reached out to Special Olympics. Special Olympics reached out to us. Gary agreed to let her play the hole. They thought maybe she would do a tee shot. We said “No, if she’s going to get a tee shot, she’s going to want to play the hole.” They agreed. Amy didn’t know she was doing this.
FS: This was a surprise for you Amy?
AB: Yeah.
JB: We selected a yardage for her to hit. I picked out clubs that she would need. She was surprised when Gary showed up at the hole.
FS: What was your reaction when he showed up, Amy?
AB: I was so surprised. He was like, “Hey, are you Amy?” I was like, “Yes.”
FS: It looked like you had such a good time. Now that you’re out of college, besides golf, is there anything else you have planned?
AB: Right now, I am the ambassador for the I GOT THIS Foundation. I make speeches and talk to media. I have a part-time job as a courtesy clerk at Fry’s Grocery. I play piano, do theater, and take dance classes. I travel around the country playing golf tournaments, including US Adaptive Open.
FS: You sound really busy.
AB: Yeah.
FS: What’s your next tournament?
AB: My next tournament is the USDGA in Florida.
JB: She’ll be in a three-day tournament for the United States Disabled Golf Association. That’s a big tournament. I think there are 90 competitors in that, from all over the country. They have multiple categories for competition. It kicks off the competition season for us.
FS: Amy, does dad caddy for you?
AB: Yes, my dad always caddies for me.
JB: I tell a story when I do a little speech with her. When she was born, I didn’t know she had Down syndrome before she was born. Jenny had a premonition that she would. You grieve that difference that your child has, and what it’s going to mean to your life. One of the things that I grieved at that time was that I would not see her play high school sports. I would not go to the volleyball tournaments, the softball tournaments. Her older sister had played competitive volleyball, competitive swimming, and softball. I thought “I’ll never get to see Amy do that.” Roll forward about 15 years, and that’s just a silly notion. Not only do I get to see her play competitive sports, but I am actually on the field with her, helping her. From a sports dad’s perspective, it doesn’t get any better than that.
FS: Absolutely. Does your older sister play golf, Amy?
AB: Yes, she does.
JB: Although Amy’s the best golfer in the family.
AB: Yeah.
FS: Amy, I’m going to ask some questions. If you would like dad to answer, it’s fine. If you want to do some answering, I’m going to leave it up to you. I don’t know if dad told you about the magazine. It talks about different special needs, different disabilities. There’s a lot of readers that may also have Down syndrome, and so some of these questions will help them. For instance, were there specific challenges due to having Down syndrome that happened during development or during school?
JB: You want me to take that?
AB: Yeah, go ahead.
JB: In school, we were always strong in the inclusion movement. When Amy was very young, she went to Montessori school up until maybe fourth grade. Then we moved out to Phoenix, and she was in regular ed classes, except for pull-out, like math and reading and those sorts of things. There were superheroes and also folks that weren’t as supportive. That’s typical of the disability world. But she always benefited greatly from being part of a larger social group. She was a volleyball manager in grade school. When she got to high school, she played on the regular girls’ golf team, for four years. She’s always been very comfortable socially. When Amy started playing golf, her coach, Matt Acuff, had never taught an athlete with Down syndrome or special needs. The early years were a combination of problem-solving and teaching, repetition, what would get through to Amy, what would work, and what didn’t work. We all worked hard on making the experience the best we could for her, the best we could for him, and to be as efficient as we could for her to grasp the concepts and build a golf swing. Matt was and is a fantastic golf coach. He is very comfortable with high repetition, very simple teaching principles, and a lot of constancy. Many of the things that we figured out in teaching Amy have helped him teach others. Folks often ask “Where did Amy get this beautiful golf swing?” This is 12 years.
FS: Well, that gives us hope that it doesn’t have to be overnight.
JB: Exactly. I think Amy loves the access that golf has given her to a broader experience. Because of golf, she’s been to some of the coolest places, and met some of the neatest people. It’s a great equalizer, because she plays golf better than lots of typical peers or adults. It earns respect, credibility, and a ticket to these fabulous opportunities.
FS: That’s wonderful. Would you say that her physical development was on target, or were there some challenges there?
JB: A great question. I would say her development was on target for Down syndrome. Early in her development, there were many challenges of staying on task. Jenny spent much of Amy’s early childhood teaching her to read, write and do math. Jenny has a master’s in communications, was a college instructor, and she took that skill and applied it to helping Amy early on. Much of the early lessons were about extending time on task. She’s been playing piano longer than she’s played golf. I think that helps a lot.
FS: Physically and intellectually.
JB: Exactly. She works as hard at piano as she does at golf. That blends well with the golfing aspects, and certainly the attention span and the diligence. With golf, there’s a particular need for endurance. We’ve spent lots of time building up Amy’s ability to play 18 holes while walking. The mental focus and the physical endurance is incredible with golf.
FS: It sounds like, although there may have been challenges, whether academically or with attention, socially, you shine, Amy. That’s your strength, right?
AB: Yes.
FS: Do you have any advice to other individuals that have Down syndrome?
JB: Do you want me answer that?
AB: Yeah.
JB: We get asked what advice we would have for parents, not necessarily for other individuals. I would say, for us, the learning was from several examples in Amy’s journey, where others stepped up and propelled her forward to the next level. I’ll give you a couple of small examples. In 8th grade, they formed a club golf team. Amy had been taking lessons for about a year, so she played on the club team. The coach, Dustin Riley, came up to Jenny at the end of the session and said to her “I think Amy can play high school golf.” When Amy was in 8th grade, the notion that she could play on a typical girls golf team in a high school of about 2500 students was something we would never have imagined. We talked about it, got Matt involved and he talked to the varsity coach at the High School. Amy joined the high school team. The coach was very accommodating. The first year she didn’t get to do much. She continued to take lessons and continued to get better. Going into the high school experience, our goal became for Amy to play one varsity golf match before she graduated. We saw that as an enormous accomplishment. In her high school career, she played two varsity matches as a sophomore. She made state as a junior, and she made state again as a senior.
FS: Congratulations, Amy.
AB: Thank you.
JB: It was an example where an outsider saw the potential in her that we didn’t see. We were limited by the notion of what a child with a disability can and can’t do. He told us not to limit her in what she is capable of. Her golf coach, Matt, when she started lessons with him, fairly quickly came to both of us and said “She is capable of more than you realize.” That turned out to be prophetic. The one piece of advice that we would have is don’t limit what your child’s capable of, because they are capable of more than you realize. You need to step out of your comfort zone sometimes, which is not easy. It certainly was never easy for us. Even today, there are things she does that we’re not always comfortable with.
I will tell you one more example where someone saw potential when we didn’t. When she was done with high school, we thought that her career was done. We couldn’t figure out what the next step was for her. Was she going to try to get a job? Was she going to go to a day program? We didn’t even imagine college. Her teacher of record Paul Roads, another one of those superheroes, said in her exit meeting “She’s not done. You can’t let her stop now. She has more to do. She has more difference to make.” He said “Why don’t you contact the local community college, see if she can take some classes, and if she could do something with the golf team. See if there are things she can do to keep her journey going. Amy’s not done with her voice.” That was a paradigm shift for us. We hadn’t considered something so bold and aggressive. Jenny contacted the college. I contacted Matt Keel, the golf coach. Jenny talked to them about what Amy could potentially do. I sent a video and a resume to the coach and said “Is there some role Amy can play with the team?” I was thinking maybe she practices with the girls, some sort of quasi-experience of being on a college golf team. He said “I’d like to offer a full scholarship for Amy to play on the team.” Once again, something that we never imagined as parents became possible because an outsider said she could go further. Amy ended up playing four years on a golf scholarship at Paradise Valley Community College. She studied dance all four years and got straight A’s. She became the first person with Down syndrome to play golf in a national tournament in Florida. We have examples in her journey where outsiders stepped up and gave us the vision of where to go next, and took us outside of our box, into places that we hadn’t imagined.
FS: That is so beautiful. I’m so glad you shared that. I hear stories about parents trying to tell people their child can do more, and they’re frustrated. It is so refreshing to hear that there were people that saw it even more than the parents.
JB: Yeah. We’re very, very thankful for what we call “Amy’s village.” She has many outside friends and family members who are part of her village and have been key to her journey.
FS: Amy, you’re good at piano, dancing, and golf. Anything else?
AB: I am doing theater. I do acting, singing, dancing, and now we will do Grease.
JB: She’s playing Rizzo. Last fall she did Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, and she was Rudolph. She was young Fiona in Shrek.
AB: Yeah, and Madagascar Junior.
JB: She’s in a theater group of special needs adults that does two shows a year. She loves it, right?
AB: Yes. And also, my boyfriend.
JB: Her boyfriend is in the show.
AB: His name is Ryan. We’ve been dating five years. That’d be December 1st, our anniversary. He lives in Glendale. He’s a theater boy, Newsies.
JB: He was one of the stars of Newsies.
AB: He was cooking at One Step Beyond on Tuesday. He plays hockey. He plays golf.
JB: He’s as busy as Amy is, so they cross paths a couple of times a week at One Step Beyond, their day program, and at Imagine Theatre Company.
AB: Yeah.
FS: Is he the same age as you?
JB: He’s about five years older, I think.
AB: Yeah.
FS: Amy, you’re good at so many things. Is there anything you find difficult?
AB: No.
FS: You have a very positive attitude.
AB: Yes.
FS: I guess you don’t have a lot of time at home because of all the traveling. How does that work?
JB: Do you want me to do it?
AB: Yeah, go ahead.
JB: Her schedule, she has golf lessons three or four days a week. She has piano one day a week, and then practices most days with mom.
AB: Then theater on Monday and Thursdays.
JB: She does a dance class a couple of afternoons a week. She goes to her day program on Tuesday and Thursday. She works three days a week at Fry’s.
FS: What do you do at Fry’s?
AB: Courtesy clerk. I’m a bagger.
JB: She’s been there about six months. She works 15 hours a week, three afternoons. She does speech therapy a couple of afternoons a week. She works on speeches and practices for interviews. So, her speech therapist is always working on interview questions.
AB: Yes.
JB: She does a keynote speech of about 20 minutes called “What’s Your Superpower?” It’s a PowerPoint speech with comic book graphics in it and that sort of thing.
AB: Yeah.
FS: Do you talk at the events for I GOT THIS?
JB: Yeah. She does charity scrambles, does corporate speeches. We do Discovery Golf clinics.
AB: Grant Thornton.
JB: You know Grant Thornton the accounting firm?
FS: No.
JB: Grant Thornton is the sixth largest accounting firm in the world. They have what’s called a Purple Paladin program. They adopt nonprofits and they adopted the I GOT THIS Foundation last summer. They’re a benefactor of the foundation and we did a Discovery Golf Clinic with their tournament in December.
AB: Oh, and Little Big Town.
JB: Yeah. Amy met Little Big Town, the country group, in December. We were at this event where we ran a clinic and the foundation was honored, and she got to meet the members of Little Big Town.
AB: Yes, I did.
FS: Do you have a favorite kind of music?
AB: I like One Direction, Jonas Brothers and Big Time Rush.
FS: Is there anything else you’d like to share, Amy, that you think would be good to put in the article for this magazine?
AB: Yeah. You got this, you can do this. Breathe and believe.
FS: Very nice. I will end the article with that. That is perfect, Amy. I know you’re a big inspiration to others, and that’s what this magazine is about. That’s why I’m so happy that you and dad agreed to be a part of it. I think you’re going to help people believe that. So, thank you.
AB: Oh, cool.
Read more about Amy and the I GOT THIS Foundation at www.igotthis.foundation
Read the article here.