Steph Curry pushed to bring golf to Howard. Could the sport return to Jackson State? One former player is working on it

When Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry decided to invest in reestablishing a golf program at Howard, the venture gained tremendous national attention across the sports world.

His passion for the sport, and desire to give youngsters the opportunity to play the game, was something that drove him to invest in the program.

But Howard isn’t the only HBCU that is without a Divison 1 program, either.

The Jackson State men’s team won 23 straight SWAC championships from 1989 through 2011. The women won 10 league titles. It was the top HBCU golf program in the country for nearly 30 years that produced pros like Tim O’Neal and Shasta Averyhardt coached by Eddie Payton, the brother of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Walter Payton.

That was until the school decided to suspend men’s and women’s golf — one of its most consistently successful programs —  in 2017.

All the discussion about what Curry has done for Howard sparked conversations within JSU circles about possibly bringing back golf.

And it seems there is an effort to do just that — or at least to explore the viability of it, Averyhardt briefly explained on Twitter.

We are working on reinstating the men and women’s golf program ???⛳️

— Shasta Averyhardt (@IamSAveryhardt) August 20, 2019

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