James Lepp: National champ saw it coming

James Lepp, the Washington Husky from British Columbia who won the NCAA golf championship last June, admits to a secret dream.

"I dream of being a football coach," he said. "I love the strategy."

A lot of people have another dream — they'd like to be able to play golf as well as Lepp.

The senior from Abbotsford, B.C., made a splash on both sides of the border last June with his dramatic extra-hole victory in the NCAA Championships.

Huskies coach Matt Thurmond remembers walking with Lepp out of a final-day team meeting where the focus had been on a strong team finish. When coach and player were beside each other, Thurmond changed the subject to the individual title and said, "You can win this thing."

Lepp replied: "I'm going to."

At Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Md., Lepp started the final round trailing by six strokes, then shot a course-record 7-under 63 with only 21 putts to force a playoff with Tacoma native Michael Putnam of Pepperdine. Lepp won the title on the third playoff hole.

Two months later, Lepp was a medalist at the U.S. Amateur before being eliminated in the second round.

Lepp was later named the Pacific Northwest Golf Association's male player of 2005 and Canada's top amateur for a third consecutive time.

His résumé includes winning the 2003 Greater Vancouver Classic, a Canadian Golf Tour event, by six strokes, and the prestigious Pacific Coast Amateur the same summer.

This year, Lepp is the leader and captain of the Huskies team that returns everyone from last year's impressive third-place finish at the NCAA Championships.

Thurmond said Lepp "sets the tone with who he is and the way he goes about his work."

"Everything James does, he does at a very high level," Thurmond said. "He's literally happy every day. He brings a great attitude to everything we do."

Thurmond said James is such a fast learner that he considers him "a genius."

"If he has an interest in something, he'll master it," Thurmond said. "He's so smart it's scary."

Erik Olson, the Husky from Tahoma High School who won the Pac-10 championship last spring, calls Lepp "a very genuine, good-hearted person and a great team captain."

While many golfers major in academic survival because of the enormous time demands of their sport, Lepp keeps above a B average in the School of Business.

He views himself as no different than those students who manage to work 30 hours a week and still succeed in the classroom.

"There's always a way to get it done," he said.

In addition to being a good student, Lepp also can claim to be a movie star. Well, sort of. A clip of him playing on The Golf Channel wound up in the movie "Sideways."

Lepp wasn't aware he was in the film until someone mentioned it to him.

"I still haven't seen it," he said.

At 5 feet 10, 155 pounds, Lepp isn't built like the football players he enjoys watching, but he has good power and distance.

He got an early start in golf when he began knocking the ball around at age 4.

His father, Dan, an accountant, belonged to the semi-private Ledgeview Golf and Country Club in Abbotsford.

When he was 5, James would willingly get up before dawn on weekends to go to the course with his father.

"He'd bring his little 5-iron and tag along," Dan said.

James wouldn't be part of the foursome but was allowed to whack away at his own ball. When he got tired, he would jump on his father's pullcart for a ride.

By age 10, James had turned the family backyard into a practice area with so many holes that walking across it was risking a sprained ankle. At one point, he landed too many balls in a grumpy neighbor's yard. The neighbor walked to the Lepp house and grabbed James' clubs and said, "I'm sick and tired of him having balls in my yard."

Dan Lepp saw the neighbor leave with the clubs. He went and took them back.

"Now that guy has kids and I think he is more understanding," Dan said.

Before long, Ledgeview replaced the backyard as Lepp's main practice site. Dan would drop off James on the way to work during summers and sometimes wait until nearly sunset for a call to pick him up.

During his high-school years at the Mennonite Educational Institute (his family's religion), James got good, but not good enough to draw scholarship offers from major West Coast schools.

"I didn't have too many options coming out of high school," he said.

Illinois offered him a scholarship and he accepted. He was Big Ten player of the year as a sophomore but wanted to be closer to home.

"A lot of days I thought, 'I don't want to be out here,' " he said.

He transferred to Washington, had to sit out a year because Illinois wouldn't agree to waive the one-year-wait rule, then made the most of his first year of competition in purple and gold last year.

He plans to turn pro after this season.

Golf is a fickle game, but sooner or later it won't be a big surprise if the bright guy from Abbotsford who knows the words to "Bow Down to Washington" joins Mike Weir as a Canadian contender on the PGA Tour.