VanBeekum shot 65, 68 and 69 in pulling away from Walla Walla’s Eddie Tache and leading the Owls to a second-place team finish in the program’s first regular-season tournament. He’d won the Southern Oregon Golf Championship in Medford, Oregon, just a week earlier.

On the surface, VanBeekum’s right where any college athlete wants to be: playing their best from the very jump. But this Utah native’s round started long ago, watching golf at home on the weekends with his father, Aaron, a psychology teacher and head girls basketball coach at BL.

“I’d just be sitting on my chair watching golf on Saturdays and Sundays, watching the pros, and he’d sit on my lap and we’d watch them together,” Aaron VanBeekum said. “That’s how he kind of fell in love with the game, and at the age of five, he started swinging golf clubs.”

The all-too harsh reality is that 1 in 13 teens actually go on to compete in college, let alone attain a scholarship. The same report by Scholarship Stats indicates that less than 2% of the current high school graduating class will even sniff the Division I level.

Photo supplied, Oregon Tech Athletics

Some of the steepest odds come with golf, easily one of the least-affordable and most time-consuming options available to a young athlete. The above evaluation measures 1 in 74 athletes will “go D-I,” rivaling the odds of wrestling (1 in 86) and soccer (1 in 108).

But at that age, you don’t deride yourself with numbers. VanBeekum saved them for algebra.

“I would say spending time with my dad, out on the course, definitely made it more intriguing than watching it,” Cayson VanBeekum said. “Especially at that young age, I don’t really think I had that much interest in watching it other than wanting to spend time with my dad.”

An avid fan of the game, Aaron especially reveres pros Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, some of the first big names Cayson learned about through the television set. But it was Ricky Fowler, and specifically his 2015 Players Championship victory, that sticks with college freshman VanBeekum today.

Fowler’s 12-under performance, and particularly how sharp he played around the green, stuck with the younger VanBeekum, undersized at the time and rarely sharing his peers’ distance off the tee. He would’ve been just 8 when Fowler secured just his second career win on the PGA Tour.

Supplied photo, Aaron VanBeekum

By high school, VanBeekum strung together four impressive seasons between his freshman campaign with Weber High and his remaining three years with the Scots. The BL star earned back-to-back Region 13 Player of the Year honors and was also named Utah’s PGA Junior Player of the Year, winning four of six events the season leading up to his college debut.

He’d chase Morgan standout Lance Loughton, a two-time 3A state champion, and finish the state runner-up in 2025, a stroke behind none other than Loughton, last spring in Salt Lake City. Loughton left his mark on another 3A newcomer, Jace Benson, who made his debut at the Junior World Championships in San Diego this offseason.

“He learned at a young age to control long irons and hybrids and stuff like that to kind of keep up with kids,” Aaron VanBeekum said. “He’d win a few tournaments here and there, stuff like that, but if you don’t hit the ball far, at that age, it was kind of hard to do it, but man he got to be a senior, his body developed, and now he’s hitting it as far as everybody else.

“He’s finding something in his game that’s been fun to watch.”

But even an accolade-spangled prep career wasn’t enough to attract the likes of VanBeekum’s dream schools, or even local programs at Weber State and Utah State. The majors, the midmajors – they passed.

“He wanted to be an Oregon Duck,” Aaron VanBeekum said. “Unfortunately, with me being a school teacher, and not having the ability to play tournaments outside the state of Utah, he didn’t get looked at by very many schools. I thought he had some good opportunities to go play at some of the local schools, Weber State or Utah State, but they just discounted him.”

VanBeekum still bet on the state of Oregon, though. It’s where he wanted to be.

Dave Meyers, the head men’s golf coach at the Oregon Institute of Technology of the NAIA, reached out to Cayson during his senior year at BL with the prospect of making his college golf aspirations a reality. It wasn’t the Big Ten, but it was something.

“Everything about his coaching philosophy and his program that he’s building – it just all fit,” Cayson VanBeekum said. “There wasn’t anything I was worried about coming up here.”

Golf and family go hand-in-hand for VanBeekum, and whatever his career prospects may be, there’s a place for his parents, and particularly his older brother, Cole.

The two VanBeekum brothers, first cousins to BL hoops notables Jaerdan and Korver VanBeekum, grew closer than ever before in the years leading up to Cayson’s graduation. A 21-year-old Cole, working in law enforcement, and two younger sisters, remain back home.

“The fear is not being able to see him as much anymore (and) losing that super-close relationship that I built him over the years,” Cayson VanBeekum said of Cole. “He’s a best friend to me. Not keeping in touch with him would break my heart.”

Admittedly, VanBeekum knew he’d be weighing the pros and cons of college life upon arriving in Oregon. But through just a few weeks, he’s managed a quality first impression in winning his team’s first regular-season tournament, Oregon’s largest amateur match-play tournament.

It’s all been part of the same dice roll for a kid from BL.

“I know there’s a lot of bias there, but I’m a proud dad,” Aaron VanBeekum said. “I’ve been at (BL) for 12 years, and you just don’t see this very often.”

Cayson is currently studying business management with a desire to work in golf after his academic and playing career.

Connect with reporter Conner Becker via email at cbecker@standard.net and X @ctbecker.