Despite a late introduction, Aiden Craig-Steele is a strong addition to the Vikes golf team
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Aiden Craig-Steele wasn’t always a star golfer on the men’s golf team at UVic — in fact, he didn’t step onto the green wearing the Vikes uniform until his third year of university.
The graduating kinesiology major was once an elite hockey player, playing at the Junior A and Junior B levels. Craig-Steele picked up the sport of golf at the Fort St. John Links Golf Course during his later years of high school. He didn’t consider golfing competitively until the summer before university.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Craig-Steele was delayed in having a shot at joining the golf team. This was furthered when he missed the team roster during a play-in tournament when sports resumed.
Craig-Steele reflected on his experience and worked on fine-tuning it — which included an assessment of how he could shape his athletic talent in hockey into his golf performance.
“At first I tried to kind of just take everything from hockey and apply it to golf in terms of, not the sport itself, but my routines,” said Craig-Steele. “Before I got on the ice, I would listen to the same music or that kind of thing to try and do the same routine. So I tried to do that with golf as well, and it didn’t really work as well.”
In the months following, Craig-Steele worked hard to reflect and re-assess his strategy, which ultimately led to him securing a spot on the roster. Since then, Craig-Steele’s performance on the team has been strong, having significantly contributed to the team, including during its fourth-place finish at the 2023 National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Men’s Golf Championship.
Although Craig-Steele has natural athletic ability, he had to put in the work to adjust to playing a new sport. He attributes part of his successful transition to the translation of his hockey mindset.
“When I look at hockey, my favourite thing I’ve always told people is … celebrating with my teammates. So, for me, as soon as I got onto the golf team, my favourite thing was being with my teammates,” said Craig-Steele. “In golf, we have an individual leaderboard and a team leaderboard and I tried my best to just focus on the team leaderboard because that’s what drove me to play.”
Craig-Steele says that this team focus from his hockey experience meant he could have a more positive mindset on the golf course.
“If I made a bad hole, or whatever it was, I still tried to take the team aspect of hockey. Instead of putting it all on myself, [I thought] let’s battle for your teammates here,” says Craig-Steele.
Craig-Steele says that other student-athletes looking to enter a new sport should savour every moment of their experience.
“I’ve played two and a half years of golf and felt like I got on the team yesterday,” said Craig-Steele. “Take it all in and enjoy it.”
