Jenna Kim ’27 Wins Fourth Straight Individual State Title in Girls Golf
By Dylan Howlett
4-minute read
A knowing hush enveloped the driving range at Greensboro National Golf Club as Jenna Kim ’27 and her teammates walked past. The awestruck silence turned into excited whispers and insistent murmurs. There goes Jenna Kim. There goes Durham Academy. It happens whenever the DA girls golf team and their best player arrive at a big tournament. That’s the result of three straight team state titles for DA and three consecutive individual state titles for Kim, who on this Monday afternoon had just set the course record in the opening round of the NCISAA Division I state championships.
The players who flocked to the range after the conclusion of play were looking for fixes — repairs physical and psychological — to 18 holes worth of potential dings and scrapes to their swing and psyche. And there was Kim, hitting shot after shot after shot, in pursuit of something different. “She’s looking,” said head coach Kevin Wicker, “for perfection.”
It is the standard of one of North Carolina’s brightest young players. Kim made the DA varsity team as a seventh grader; she set the school record in her first event. She played in the final pairing of that year’s state championships; she finished second in the individual event. She won her first state title as an eighth grader, becoming the youngest-ever girls golf individual state champion in NCISAA history. She won her second as a ninth grader, even after the state tournament director lengthened the course to counteract her prodigious skill.
By the time she strode to the driving range in Greensboro last week, she was halfway to her fourth consecutive individual championship, which she would go on to win by 11 strokes as the only player to finish under par. In the process, Kim became the second DA student-athlete to win both four individual state titles and four straight titles. (Kelly Smoke ’00 won five consecutive discus titles from 1996 to 2000 and four shot put titles in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000.)
After wrapping up their own post-opening round practice sessions, the rest of the team — which went on to cap an 8–2 regular season and a fifth consecutive TISAC (Triangle Independent Schools Athletic Conference) championship with a fifth-place finish at states — had loaded their bags onto the team bus. Kim remained on the range with a club in hand. Wicker walked up to her and told her not to rush. Get whatever you need, he told her.
Kim would need Wicker, it turned out, the next day. On the second hole, she did something profoundly mortal: She missed a two-foot birdie putt. Kim muttered to herself as she walked off the green. Wicker, in his 21st year coaching golf and his third year coaching DA boys and girls golf, was waiting for Kim. He placed an arm around her. “Look, everyone has to give a donation,” he said, referring to the missed putt. “You just gave the field a donation.” They shared a laugh. “You’re the best player I’ve ever seen,” Wicker said. “Now smile, and let’s go get it.” So she did.
“If you try your best, you can accomplish a lot of things,” Kim said a few days later. “But you have to enjoy it and make sure you still love playing golf. I feel like the results will come much more naturally if you do that than if you force yourself to practice.”
She didn’t always have that balance, Kim said. She started playing tournaments when she was 6, earned an invitation to the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship when she was 7, won her first tournaments at 10 and 11, and, at 13, took home a venerated Drive, Chip & Putt crown at Augusta National Golf Club. The only way to become — as she has now — the No. 53-ranked player out of nearly 1,500 in the American Junior Golf Association, and the owner of eight lifetime holes-in-one, was to practice. Relentlessly. Now she seeks out regular breaks, and time with friends, to get away from the game.
Her teammates, too, have noticed the difference. Lilly Jones ’26, a fellow member of DA’s three state title teams, had heard about a local golf prodigy when Kim arrived at the Washington Duke Golf Club for her first DA practice as a seventh grader. Jones sidled up to Kim and started asking her questions. Kim didn’t say a word. Then she started whispering her answers. Then came one-word answers. By the end of the practice, they found themselves locked into a full, laughter-filled conversation.
Kim now regularly chats with her opponents on the course. Coaches and athletic directors at other schools tell DA Director of Athletics Andy Pogach how much they enjoy watching her and talking to her, and they admire how gracious and friendly she is toward her fellow players. “They all know how good she is,” Pogach said, “but those that don’t know her and get to know her can see how amazing she is — not just as a player, but also as a person.” When she played alongside Kenzie Kim ’26 in a conference round earlier this year, Jenna suggested they stash their phones into the cup on the green and record their respective birdie putts approaching, and then sinking into, the hole.
“She’s definitely become more confident,” said Kenzie Kim, another member of the three-time state champion teams. “She knew that she was always good, but it doesn’t really come from people telling you that you’re good. It has to come from yourself.”
“She’s a team player,” Kenzie Kim said later. “She’s literally just a joy.”
“It’s so hard to explain it to people who don’t golf because they don’t really know how hard it is to be that good,” Jones said. “But if I could compare her to Tiger Woods, I honestly might. It might be crazy, but I would.”
Kim has committed to Yale University for the fall of 2027 — she has seen parts of Gilmore Girls and has already sampled New Haven’s famous pizza offerings — and will continue competing at junior tournaments. A final season with DA awaits next year. Beyond that? Jones has already joked, rather half-seriously, about serving as Kim’s caddy at professional events. “She will definitely be on TV one day, and hopefully she’ll remember all of us,” said Wicker, laughing. “How cool is it for a coach to be able to say you coached a four-time state champion and, hopefully, a five-time state champion?”
“Golf has given me a lot of experiences, both with going to places and meeting new people,” Kim said. “And knowing that I’m good at something makes me more confident in general as a person. It’s given me so much. I’m very grateful that I started golf.”
So, too, is the DA girls golf program. They’ll always leave the bus running for Jenna Kim.