Las Vegas seniors caddie their way to college through scholarships

Andrea Quintero Delgado has spent her youth playing soccer.

Delgado, an All-Southern Nevada selection and four-year captain at Equipo Academy, dreams of playing in college.

She’ll get her opportunity thanks to golf, a sport she has never played but has still given her the chance to become the first person in her family to attend college.

Delgado is one of four Las Vegas seniors awarded 2025 Chick Evans Scholarships after spending the past three summers caddying at clubs in the Chicago area while learning life skills, experiencing independence and developing bonds with fellow participants and mentors at the golf clubs.

She is joined by Genesis Padilla Barajas (Equipo), Jimena Trejo Vazquez (Advanced Technologies Academy) and Mailie-Aarya Voraphankit (Faith Lutheran) as Southern Nevada recipients of the scholarships, which have a value of $125,000 each over their four years.

More than 12,000 students have received their college educations with Evans Scholarships over the years, with almost 1,200 students currently enrolled at 24 universities across the country.

Delgado will be joining them in the fall, most likely at John Carroll University outside Cleveland, where she plans to study sociology and criminology with the goal of becoming a forensic scientist. She’ll also try to earn a place on the women’s soccer team.

“I’m really proud of myself for making it happen,” Delgado said of the effort and commitment necessary to complete the program.

And despite her athletic background, she found caddying harder than expected. Tiring, but rewarding nonetheless.

“It taught me to be very self-disciplined,” she said, noting that will help her in college and beyond.

Voraphankit had similar feelings about her caddie experience.

“Caddying has shaped my work ethic, endurance and leadership skills,” she said. “All the lessons I’ve learned on the course will help me in college as I work toward my goal of becoming a software developer.”

All four Las Vegas students have maintained 3.9 GPAs or higher during their high school years and caddied more than 100 rounds each over the three summers.

“Overall, it was just a great experience,” Delgado said.

Drive, Chip and Putt

Charlotte Halstead carried the banner for Southern Nevada at the annual Drive, Chip and Putt competition held at Augusta National to kick off Masters week. Halstead finished 10th in the girls 7-9 division. Her best event was driving, where she placed fifth in her group with a 179-yard effort.

Halstead earned the opportunity to represent the Southwest region at Augusta after winning local qualifying at Paiute Golf Resort last June, a sub-regional qualifier in Phoenix in August and a regional qualifier in Hawaii in October.

The 9-year-old has been playing golf for four years and plays out of Desert Willows. She took up the game during the pandemic when she couldn’t play soccer.

Halstead told Drive, Chip and Putt organizers that Lydia Ko, Nelly Korda and Jason Day are her golf role models, and she hopes to follow in their footsteps to become a professional golfer on the LPGA Tour.

Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. Reach him at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.