ELMSFORD, N.Y. (February 3, 2025) – Using your hands is critical in the game of golf. They are your touch point with the club to make the ball go where you want. Your hands are also essential if you're a dentist trying to clean your patient's teeth and keep their mouth healthy.
This is perfect for MGACSF Caddie Scholar Kayla Howell, a junior captain on the women’s golf team at Wesleyan University in Connecticut who wants to become an orthodontist.
During her summers, Kayla caddies at Scarsdale Golf Club and works in the bag room. She is a molecular biology and biochemistry major at Wesleyan, aiming to attend dental school, become a dentist, and specialize in orthodontics.
"Dental school is another four years [after graduating from Wesleyan],” explained Kayla. “Then you have two or three years of residency, and specialty is another two or three years. So, I have a little more school ahead of me," said Kayla, laughing.
"I always knew I'd like science and wanted to do premed and be a doctor, but then I realized I enjoy working with my hands. And I've always liked building and fixing things. Dentistry is in the medical field, and I shadowed our family dentist over the summer, and I realized this is what I want to do."
The Yorktown Heights native loves working at Scarsdale during the summer.
"Oh my gosh, it is so much fun," notes Kayla. "I brag to all my friends at school and everyone. [Working at Scarsdale] is the best summer job. For me, it is because the people at Scarsdale are so great. It has been a cool opportunity for me."
After exclusively making loops in her first year at Scarsdale, Kayla added bag room duties in 2024. With a handful of youth caddies at the club, a lot of her coworkers are around the same age, so getting along with everyone is easy. Kayla is the only female among the caddies, the opportunity has provided her good experience and a positive outlook on her capabilities.
"It showed me that girls and women can do everything a man can," says Kayla. "It helps even more since I am going into dental, which is a male-dominated industry. The job gives me confidence and reassurance that it is okay that I may be the only girl. So, I can still do the thing that I love. Everyone else is doing it; I can still carry two bags like you've got to be doing. It gives me that confidence that don't be scared that you're the only girl there because you can still do it."
Skills gained caddieing and working in the bag room have helped Kayla become a leader on the golf team at Wesleyan.
“I think it's important to be confident in yourself because then you can help others,” notes Kayla. “That's helped me kind of lead the team and take charge.”
Before taking her talents to Wesleyan, Kayla played five years of high school golf for Yorktown under coach Skip Marini. Skip was there when Kayla was first introduced to the game, too. When Kayla was eight, she went to Skip’s camp after finding an advertisement for it in the newspaper. She used some hand-me-down clubs from a cousin and attended. From there, the rest was history. Kayla was the captain of her high school team under Skip, too.
Being a caddie scholar has helped Kayla pay for school. She also knows what it means to have this support during her undergraduate education.
“Knowing that there's an organization like the MGA and the Caddie Scholarship Foundation that does this for people in the game of golf – it's so nice, and it means so much to my family and many other families that receive this scholarship. The financial burden of college is scary sometimes, and I think about it. But just having this extra help from an organization like the MGA means so much.”
