NEW PALESTINE — When she got the letter in the mail, New Palestine junior Annaliese Fox thought she would be opening a simple thank-you letter.
The envelope came from the Indiana Golf Office. Fox had competed in the Indiana Junior Tour last year, so that wasn’t out of the ordinary.
There were some surprises within, though.
Fox was named the Indiana Junior Tour Girls Player of the Year, an unexpected honor. Her and her parents had to re-read the letter before they realized that wasn’t the only honor she had received.
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She also was named the Indiana Junior Golf Program Girls Player of the Year.
For the first time ever, one player earned both awards.
“When I opened it, I was like, this is probably just to say thank you for participating,” Fox said. “Then I actually read it and I was really shocked. I think I was more impressed at myself with how rough my year was, and how it actually turned out and ended up ending.”
“When I read it, I had to re-read it,” her father, Tim, said. “I didn’t know that they honored the players at the end of the year like that. It was a good reward for her for all the effort that she put into the game.”
The letter invited Fox and her family to the annual Indiana Golf Hall of Fame banquet, conducted Nov. 15 in Indianapolis.
She was honored at the banquet, where she received her awards and gave a speech.
“This was just amazing,” her mother, Shirley, said. “Thinking about how her year started and everything she went through … Seeing her up there, giving her speech that she wrote and thanking everybody, it’s just like, wow, that’s my little girl.”
A season that started with uncertainty ended with a slew of honors. For her impressive individual performances all year, the New Palestine junior has also been named the Hancock County Girls Golfer of the Year.
Rough start
Things didn’t start smoothly for Fox.
In early April, as she readied to start tournament season, she had to undergo an emergency appendectomy, setting her back almost two full months and costing her two tournaments.
For the second time in three years, she lost a close friend, who died in May. It was an emotional and challenging time.
But she rebounded quickly.
“I’ve seen her just consistently top 10, top five, top three, runner-up, winning,” Tim Fox said. “With the honor with the junior tour, she did that because she missed a couple of tournaments when she had her surgery. To get her back in competition, she wanted to do a couple junior tour events. To get that honor, and the player of the year, going through all these different events — the Master, the Junior PGA, the USGA and state, and just to be consistent, that’s what we were looking for this year is consistent.”
That consistency carried over to her junior season at New Palestine. She entered the year with high hopes, confident after earning 15th place at state as a sophomore.
She saw her team working hard throughout the offseason, looking to improve and hopefully advance as a group to the state finals.
But, like her tournament season, things started out slower than expected.
“For our team, it actually started pretty rough,” Fox said. “But we got to keep working and working, and (coach) Sarah (O’Brien) pushed us and pushed us a lot harder than we ever have been, really. I think this year we had more effort in practices than we’d had. By the end of the year, we were a lot stronger.”
The Dragons picked things up, winning their fifth straight county golf tournament. Fox was the individual medalist after topping Mt. Vernon freshman Alaina Nugent in a one-hole playoff.
The team finished second in the Hoosier Heritage Conference. Fox won that, too. They then went on to win a fifth straight sectional title, with Fox winning the individual championship there as well.
New Palestine fell short of the ultimate goal of advancing as a team to the state finals, but Fox made it back for the second straight year, where she improved on her finish from 2017 by finishing 13th in 2018.
Her goals for this year are pretty much the same she had going into last year — break her own school record at state and bring her team with her.
“Of all the stuff through high school, how far we went as a team, me going to state individually, that was awesome, but my biggest goal for school and team is for my team to go to state senior year,” Fox said. “I think that would be amazing. We have a good chance of going if we play our A game.”
Room to grow
At the high school level, Fox typically enjoys a big advantage against most of her competition — her power.
She drives the ball farther than most. It’s evident in almost any tournament she plays, as she gets bigger distances off the tee than many of her counterparts. She played in a PGA qualifier in 2018 and was one of the youngest competitors. She was paired with an assistant coach from a Division 1 college and other college athletes, and she remembers on one hole, she hit the ball 50 or 60 yards farther off the tee than anyone in her group.
That’s something that she is working on improving, by a pretty big margin, for next year.
“I think that put a big impression on me for college,” Fox said. “College obviously looks at you for your academics and everything, but for sports, golf is distance and your scores. I think that’s what showed me that I have the potential to do better next year.”
She’s working on the academics. She’s improved each year since her freshman year, but she isn’t where she wants to be yet, so she’s working with a tutor twice a week.
She’s also working with a personal fitness trainer to help make her stronger, something she was initially resistant to.
Her first session was “phenomenal,” working on strength in her ankles, knees, hips, elbows and shoulders.
When her swing coach, Chuck Helms, told her what distance he thinks she can achieve with the help of the training, she was sold. He estimates she can get to around 300 yards off the tee.
“When he told me that I could be able to hit that far, I was like, I want to do this,” Fox said. “This is going to be great for college and moving forward. I was more shocked than excited. I’m only 5-foot-3, and hitting about 290, 300 yards, that’s shocking.”
The junior has big goals all around for this year and beyond. She wants to play in college and has talked to coaches and had one unofficial visit.
But despite her success, despite her confidence, she stays grounded, something her parents are proud of.
“It’s nice to see how humble she is,” Shirley Fox said. “It’s nice to watch her out there and see how she shares her faith. We had a rain-out and there was a rainbow, and here she’s talking with five girls about Noah’s Ark and God.”
Moving forward, Fox is hoping to play in more women’s tournaments and PGA qualifiers. The success she’s had, the tournament wins and the honors, haven’t slowed her drive to improve.
Getting to state twice herself wasn’t good enough. Being honored at the Hall of Fame banquet wasn’t good enough.
She liked opening that letter and finding out she was the first person to accomplish something. She wants to do that again, just as much as she wants to help her team achieve its goal of competing at state, so she takes it upon herself to get better to help make that happen.
“For winning this big award that nobody has ever won, it makes me want to win it again,” Fox said. “I want to push myself harder and harder just to be that person to do it two years in a row, to win that same award.”