Photo by: PGA of America
BK’s Biggest Battle
May 27, 2020 | Women's Golf
Brittany Kelly is attacking ovarian cancer with the same mentality that made her an all-time BSU great and one of the top-playing golf pros in the country
In almost every way imaginable, 2019 was a banner year for Brittany Kelly on the golf course.
The 2011 Ball State graduate qualified for her first LPGA major championship. She led the winning side in the inaugural Women's PGA Cup. She won the Indiana Women's Open and the Indiana PGA Assistants Championship where she was the only female competitor. And she was the Indiana PGA Women's Player of the Year.
Kelly was playing the best golf of her life and doing it all while faithfully fulfilling her wide-ranging duties as the PGA assistant golf professional at Woodland Country Club in Carmel. With the way she was performing on the outside, it is hard to imagine what was happening inside.
Kelly's body was developing clear cell ovarian cancer, though she wouldn't know exactly what it was until late January of this year, some three weeks after surgery to remove a mass nearly half the size of a football.
As much as she is a golfer, Kelly is an athlete. Growing up, she was a standout on the basketball court and the soccer field, as well. She has always been a fierce competitor. Now she is directing that inner fire toward an opponent bigger than any she has faced in the athletic realm. And she is attacking it with the same intensity.
Initially reticent to go public with such a private battle, she quickly shifted her thought process. Until a deep dive into research after her diagnosis, she was not really that familiar with ovarian cancer compared to other types of the disease. She feared that's the way it was for a lot of women. So she decided to open up.
"I want to make sure people know about ovarian cancer," Kelly said. "There's not that much out there about ovarian cancer. It has such subtle symptoms. It's a lot of symptoms that women already typically have, so they don't think anything of it. You know your body better than anyone else. You have to watch for little things."
Success and Symptoms
Kelly spent the entire 2019 season (and her 2018 season, too) eyeing a chance to play in the first-ever Women's PGA Cup. The bi-annual, international competition has existed for men's club professionals since 1973, but 2019 marked the first time for the women's event. It would feature teams from the USA, Great Britain & Ireland, Australia, Canada and Sweden.
Making the team is a two-year process. The five club pros from across the country who accumulate the most ranking points through tournaments over those two years earn a spot on the roster. It was Kelly's primary goal, even bigger than competing against the best players in the world at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship which she did earlier in the year. And like most things she sets her mind on, she accomplished it.
Kelly was the final qualifier, but she went on to lead Team USA in each of the three rounds at Barton Creek in Austin, Texas. Captained by PGA of America President Suzy Whaley, the Americans held off Team Canada to win by four shots. Kelly's 54-hole total of 218 (+2) was the best of any player in the field that week in late October.
"It's always been a dream of mine to play on the LPGA and to play in a major, and I won't downplay that at all," Kelly said. "But (the PGA Cup) is hands down my greatest accomplishment to date. You can put any experience in any sport I've ever played up against it. To represent your country, you can't beat that."
Kelly was still riding the high one month later when she first noticed the symptoms. She was playing in the Assistant PGA Professional Championship at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida, when she started experiencing abdominal pain and the frequent need to go to the bathroom. It was uncomfortable, but she took some pain relievers and didn't think much of it. It certainly wasn't affecting her game.
Kelly tied for 15th that week in a field of 132 of the best assistant professionals in the country, the vast majority of them men. She's been beating most of the men at these events for years now. This tournament was no different.
But in the weeks that followed the close to her 2019 season, the symptoms that began in Port St. Lucie didn't subside. They got worse, much worse. Golfers are used to facing dozens, even hundreds of opponents in a typical tournament. Kelly's focus would now be set on a singular foe.
Discovery and Surgery
Kelly visited her primary care physician on Dec. 5, and within the next week she underwent an ultrasound and an MRI. Those tests revealed a mass on her ovary that measured, in centimeters, 9 by 17 by 13. In inches, that's roughly 3.5 by 6.5 by 5.
She made her own 3D model out of paper to give her some perspective.
"It made me realize how big it really was," she said. "It's actually a lot bigger than what I thought."
Kelly had more tests on Christmas Eve and scheduled her surgery for Jan. 9, receiving permission from her doctors to push the operation back one week so she could go on a family ski trip. Her new health battle was already forcing her to cancel three other offseason trips. She wanted to make sure she at least had this one.
The ski trip didn't last long. Kelly began experiencing severe pain in Colorado and had to cut the trip short, returning home where she was admitted to Ascension St. Vincent Hospital early and given medication to ease the discomfort until her operation.
"That was probably the worst pain I've felt in my life," Kelly said, "even worse than the recovery from surgery."
It was not until after the surgery Kelly would know for sure the tumor was cancerous. There was an indication it might be in that her CA 125 blood test registered 383 units of cancer antigen per milliliter whereas a normal reading is less than 46. But the test isn't accurate enough to confirm the existence of cancer. Only surgery can do that.
So it was not until she awoke from the exploratory laparotomy and asked a nurse that she learned the tumor was cancerous. It had been removed but was sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for testing to determine exactly what type of cancer it was. The results took three weeks.
"Those were probably the hardest three weeks I've lived through," Kelly said. "Just wondering, questioning. What kind? What stage? Has it spread anywhere else? Do I have to do chemo? There was so much going through my head."
Finally the results came back. Clear cell ovarian cancer.
The good news was it was Stage I, confined to one ovary. The bad news was it was Grade 3, more likely to spread. That meant chemotherapy would be necessary.
Clear cell is not a common type of the disease, and especially not for someone as young as Kelly. Ovacome, a British ovarian cancer charitable organization, says clear cell accounts for 3-5 percent of ovarian cancer diagnoses in the western world. A Gynecologic Oncology article from 2015 puts the rate at 5-10 percent of all cases in North America.
The same study found the average age at diagnosis to be 53 years old. Kelly is 31.
Mental Battles and Cancer Amidst COVID-19
It is still less than a decade ago that Kelly was rewriting the record books in Muncie.
Head coach Katherine Mowat was thrilled when the three-sport Hamilton Southeastern star decided to make the short trip up Interstate 69 from Fishers to follow the family tradition at Ball State. Her parents are both Cardinals (her dad was a pole vaulter), as are her sister and brother-in-law.
Before Kelly even set foot on campus, she had already won the Indiana Women's Open once and played in the U.S. Girls Junior.
"She could have gone anywhere," Mowat said. "It can be hard to keep Indiana kids in our state in our sport. It was a blessing she decided to stay close to home."
The rest is history … the lowest stroke average in program history, the first BSU player to compete in an NCAA Regional, the first to be named All-MAC three times. Her accomplishments speak for themselves.
Kelly was a talented collegiate golfer for sure. But it was the grit and determination with which she played, Mowat recalls, that took her game to the next level. And it is that same grit and determination she is using to attack her new challenge.
"I'm using more the mental side than anything at this point," Kelly said. "You get in some mental battles the same way you do on a golf course. I've been able to draw on that."
The surgery was invasive and left Kelly in a weakened state. At first it was a challenge to even sit up, to get out of bed or to take a step. She had to do breathing exercises. It was four weeks before she was able to walk normally. During that time, she had her partner Gretchen Lulow to help take care of her. A former Ball State field hockey player, Lulow is now a medical ICU nurse at the same St. Vincent hospital where Kelly had surgery.
Even strong and driven individuals can use a push sometimes in recovery, and Lulow was there with the "tough love" of a partner and healthcare professional, ensuring Kelly was staying on pace in the process to avoid any complications.
Kelly underwent the first of six chemotherapy cycles on Feb. 28. She has endured one cycle every three weeks since then, each one an eight-hour infusion aimed at any residual cancer cells that may remain. They leave her feeling "blah" for about a week afterward, but she has become accustomed to them.
She just completed her fifth cycle and is scheduled for her final one June 12. But before her second treatment, the COVID-19 outbreak threw a wrench into the mix. Lulow's unit transitioned to solely caring for critically-ill patients with the virus, and she says she has nursed "some of the sickest patients I've ever seen."
So with Lulow's close proximity to infected patients and Kelly's compromised immune system from the surgery and chemo, the two have been forced to live separately for more than two months now. Kelly retreated to her childhood home in Fishers, living alone for a month and a half before her parents were able to return from their winter in Florida. (Once they did, all of them wore masks in the house for two weeks.) Kelly and Lulow have been able to interact and see one another through modern technology but not in person.
"It's been really tough not being able to physically be there for her while she's going through chemo," Lulow said. "As if battling cancer wasn't a challenge enough, throw in a pandemic that I am personally involved in on a daily basis. It's all just terrible timing. It does get very lonely being apart, and I can't imagine what she's really had to go through, having to deal with so much physically and mentally while living alone. She is definitely a fighter and handling this all with so much grace and strength."
A Role Model
Kelly has been focusing on her recovery, on spreading the word about ovarian cancer and on doing as much of her job as Woodland's assistant pro as she can from home. Once she's healthier and the virus clears up, she will be back to work at the course. But it's tough to keep a golf club out of her hand, and by the fifth week of her recovery she was hitting chip shots.
When she was 8 years old, her father converted one of the rooms in the family's basement for putting and chipping practice. Before leaving for the winter, he hung a net in the room to accommodate full swings. That net has come in handy. Kelly has spent lots of her time down there, building her way up from those chip shots to full swings.
"It's not the same practice," Kelly said. "I'm not able to put as much effort in yet. My swing doesn't look the same. The abdomen is such a big part of the golf swing, so there's some hesitation to turn through the golf ball. During chemo, my practice sessions are a lot shorter. It's the quality over the quantity. I might hit 15 golf balls, but that would be considered practice that day. My perspective has changed a little bit."
The week before she began chemo, Kelly was back in Muncie for the annual Indiana PGA Spring Business Meeting at the Horizon Convention Center. It was a big event for her. She picked up her player of the year award, and she was elected to the Indiana Section PGA Board of Directors. Callaway Golf and the company's Indiana sales rep Tim Diedrich presented her with a staff bag featuring her name and a teal ribbon in recognition of ovarian cancer awareness. They've also produced a special golf ball adorned with teal ribbons for her to play this year.
During that visit to Muncie, Kelly set aside time to meet with the current Ball State women's golfers, sharing insight about both her career and her current health battle. She did the same on a Zoom call with the team not long after the stay-at-home orders began. Like her initial unfamiliarity with ovarian cancer, Kelly was not always aware of the possibilities that existed for her in the game of golf outside of being a professional player. She wants to bring more awareness to those, too.
"Part of her mission is to help specifically female golfers understand what opportunities exist," Mowat said. "My team has played with her a few times; she's allowed us to come to the courses where she's worked. Almost all of them have been around her, and they respect her because she's a great player and doing great things in the profession for women and golf.
"She has been so incredibly strong through this which isn't surprising given just how strong she has always been. What has really been heartwarming is how willingly she has opened up. As soon as she started opening up, she realized what a platform she had. She has been an inspiration to all of us. I'm really proud of her for facing this like a champion."
An Army of Support
Kelly remains deeply embedded in the Ball State program. One of her tour bags adorns the entrance way to the Cardinals' Earl Yestingsmeier Golf Center. And she represents BSU with pride wherever she plays.
She does the same with Woodland Country Club. The club supports her in her continued playing efforts, and she in turn gives the club and its members everything she has. Woodland's PGA Head Professional Patrick White calls her the glue that keeps everything together.
"I'd be hard-pressed to say she's not the heart and soul of our operation," White said.
That has not changed despite her current situation. She is dialed in from home, setting up online systems for tee times, leagues and events. She actively participates in virtual calls with the Woodland staff, still smiling, laughing and telling everyone she can't wait to be back with them soon. And she and White check in at least five times a day.
Kelly lived the life of a touring pro for two years after college before deciding to settle in on the club side of things as a PGA assistant golf professional, first at The Hawthorns in Fishers and now at Woodland where she has worked since 2017. And while she now focuses on teaching and growing the game, her position still offers her the chance to compete at a high level. And that is exactly what she has done. Once a competitor, always a competitor.
"She's the most goal-driven and determined individual I've ever had close experience with," White said. "What she's been able to accomplish on the course is a testament to that. She goes up against the guys, and she just whoops their butt every time she plays. There's no doubt she's going to do the same with cancer."
Coming off her phenomenal 2019 season, Kelly was primed for another big year in 2020. Those plans have temporarily been put on hold by both her recovery and by COVID-19. Tournaments have been pushed back or canceled altogether. But you can bet Kelly will be back to competition sooner than later and with an army of supporters like she has had through this whole experience.
From the members at Woodland to Ball State golfers past and present, from her PGA Cup teammates to old high school classmates, and from family to friends, Kelly has felt the love during her journey. She has received meals, flowers, phone calls and encouragement of all kinds to help her along.
She has received support from ovarian cancer survivors, and she has also had women tell her they scheduled appointments with their doctors based on her story. They've all been connections through the game of golf.
"I thought my network was fairly big going into this, but it has expanded even more," Kelly said. "You don't realize until you go through this how important the relationships you've built are. This has shown me how awesome people can be."
Many of her supporters are wearing special wristbands these days. Kelly's parents had them designed while she was recovering from surgery. They are teal, of course, emblazoned on one side with "BK Strong" and on the other with the words hope, strength and faith. Kelly asks only one thing of everyone who wears one: help spread awareness of the symptoms.
"Yes, it has my initials on it, but it's not about me; it's how can we help people in the future?" she said. "Hope, strength and faith. All three of those have helped me get to the point where I am now, and they're going to help me get through the rest of chemo and beat this cancer."
For more information about ovarian cancer and its symptoms, diagnosis and treatment, visit the American Cancer Society's ovarian cancer page at cancer.org.
The 2011 Ball State graduate qualified for her first LPGA major championship. She led the winning side in the inaugural Women's PGA Cup. She won the Indiana Women's Open and the Indiana PGA Assistants Championship where she was the only female competitor. And she was the Indiana PGA Women's Player of the Year.
Kelly was playing the best golf of her life and doing it all while faithfully fulfilling her wide-ranging duties as the PGA assistant golf professional at Woodland Country Club in Carmel. With the way she was performing on the outside, it is hard to imagine what was happening inside.
Kelly's body was developing clear cell ovarian cancer, though she wouldn't know exactly what it was until late January of this year, some three weeks after surgery to remove a mass nearly half the size of a football.
As much as she is a golfer, Kelly is an athlete. Growing up, she was a standout on the basketball court and the soccer field, as well. She has always been a fierce competitor. Now she is directing that inner fire toward an opponent bigger than any she has faced in the athletic realm. And she is attacking it with the same intensity.
Initially reticent to go public with such a private battle, she quickly shifted her thought process. Until a deep dive into research after her diagnosis, she was not really that familiar with ovarian cancer compared to other types of the disease. She feared that's the way it was for a lot of women. So she decided to open up.
"I want to make sure people know about ovarian cancer," Kelly said. "There's not that much out there about ovarian cancer. It has such subtle symptoms. It's a lot of symptoms that women already typically have, so they don't think anything of it. You know your body better than anyone else. You have to watch for little things."
Success and Symptoms
Kelly spent the entire 2019 season (and her 2018 season, too) eyeing a chance to play in the first-ever Women's PGA Cup. The bi-annual, international competition has existed for men's club professionals since 1973, but 2019 marked the first time for the women's event. It would feature teams from the USA, Great Britain & Ireland, Australia, Canada and Sweden.
Making the team is a two-year process. The five club pros from across the country who accumulate the most ranking points through tournaments over those two years earn a spot on the roster. It was Kelly's primary goal, even bigger than competing against the best players in the world at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship which she did earlier in the year. And like most things she sets her mind on, she accomplished it.
Kelly was the final qualifier, but she went on to lead Team USA in each of the three rounds at Barton Creek in Austin, Texas. Captained by PGA of America President Suzy Whaley, the Americans held off Team Canada to win by four shots. Kelly's 54-hole total of 218 (+2) was the best of any player in the field that week in late October.
"It's always been a dream of mine to play on the LPGA and to play in a major, and I won't downplay that at all," Kelly said. "But (the PGA Cup) is hands down my greatest accomplishment to date. You can put any experience in any sport I've ever played up against it. To represent your country, you can't beat that."
This was the most amazing week of my career ?????? pic.twitter.com/SqMkS3P4pE
— Brittany Kelly (@BrittTheGolfer) October 27, 2019
Kelly was still riding the high one month later when she first noticed the symptoms. She was playing in the Assistant PGA Professional Championship at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida, when she started experiencing abdominal pain and the frequent need to go to the bathroom. It was uncomfortable, but she took some pain relievers and didn't think much of it. It certainly wasn't affecting her game.
Kelly tied for 15th that week in a field of 132 of the best assistant professionals in the country, the vast majority of them men. She's been beating most of the men at these events for years now. This tournament was no different.
But in the weeks that followed the close to her 2019 season, the symptoms that began in Port St. Lucie didn't subside. They got worse, much worse. Golfers are used to facing dozens, even hundreds of opponents in a typical tournament. Kelly's focus would now be set on a singular foe.
Discovery and Surgery
Kelly visited her primary care physician on Dec. 5, and within the next week she underwent an ultrasound and an MRI. Those tests revealed a mass on her ovary that measured, in centimeters, 9 by 17 by 13. In inches, that's roughly 3.5 by 6.5 by 5.
She made her own 3D model out of paper to give her some perspective.
"It made me realize how big it really was," she said. "It's actually a lot bigger than what I thought."
Kelly had more tests on Christmas Eve and scheduled her surgery for Jan. 9, receiving permission from her doctors to push the operation back one week so she could go on a family ski trip. Her new health battle was already forcing her to cancel three other offseason trips. She wanted to make sure she at least had this one.
The ski trip didn't last long. Kelly began experiencing severe pain in Colorado and had to cut the trip short, returning home where she was admitted to Ascension St. Vincent Hospital early and given medication to ease the discomfort until her operation.
"That was probably the worst pain I've felt in my life," Kelly said, "even worse than the recovery from surgery."
It was not until after the surgery Kelly would know for sure the tumor was cancerous. There was an indication it might be in that her CA 125 blood test registered 383 units of cancer antigen per milliliter whereas a normal reading is less than 46. But the test isn't accurate enough to confirm the existence of cancer. Only surgery can do that.
So it was not until she awoke from the exploratory laparotomy and asked a nurse that she learned the tumor was cancerous. It had been removed but was sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for testing to determine exactly what type of cancer it was. The results took three weeks.
"Those were probably the hardest three weeks I've lived through," Kelly said. "Just wondering, questioning. What kind? What stage? Has it spread anywhere else? Do I have to do chemo? There was so much going through my head."
Finally the results came back. Clear cell ovarian cancer.
The good news was it was Stage I, confined to one ovary. The bad news was it was Grade 3, more likely to spread. That meant chemotherapy would be necessary.
Clear cell is not a common type of the disease, and especially not for someone as young as Kelly. Ovacome, a British ovarian cancer charitable organization, says clear cell accounts for 3-5 percent of ovarian cancer diagnoses in the western world. A Gynecologic Oncology article from 2015 puts the rate at 5-10 percent of all cases in North America.
The same study found the average age at diagnosis to be 53 years old. Kelly is 31.
Mental Battles and Cancer Amidst COVID-19
It is still less than a decade ago that Kelly was rewriting the record books in Muncie.
Head coach Katherine Mowat was thrilled when the three-sport Hamilton Southeastern star decided to make the short trip up Interstate 69 from Fishers to follow the family tradition at Ball State. Her parents are both Cardinals (her dad was a pole vaulter), as are her sister and brother-in-law.
Before Kelly even set foot on campus, she had already won the Indiana Women's Open once and played in the U.S. Girls Junior.
"She could have gone anywhere," Mowat said. "It can be hard to keep Indiana kids in our state in our sport. It was a blessing she decided to stay close to home."
The rest is history … the lowest stroke average in program history, the first BSU player to compete in an NCAA Regional, the first to be named All-MAC three times. Her accomplishments speak for themselves.
Kelly was a talented collegiate golfer for sure. But it was the grit and determination with which she played, Mowat recalls, that took her game to the next level. And it is that same grit and determination she is using to attack her new challenge.
"I'm using more the mental side than anything at this point," Kelly said. "You get in some mental battles the same way you do on a golf course. I've been able to draw on that."
The surgery was invasive and left Kelly in a weakened state. At first it was a challenge to even sit up, to get out of bed or to take a step. She had to do breathing exercises. It was four weeks before she was able to walk normally. During that time, she had her partner Gretchen Lulow to help take care of her. A former Ball State field hockey player, Lulow is now a medical ICU nurse at the same St. Vincent hospital where Kelly had surgery.
Even strong and driven individuals can use a push sometimes in recovery, and Lulow was there with the "tough love" of a partner and healthcare professional, ensuring Kelly was staying on pace in the process to avoid any complications.
Kelly underwent the first of six chemotherapy cycles on Feb. 28. She has endured one cycle every three weeks since then, each one an eight-hour infusion aimed at any residual cancer cells that may remain. They leave her feeling "blah" for about a week afterward, but she has become accustomed to them.
?????? pic.twitter.com/64BVuqoNRq
— Brittany Kelly (@BrittTheGolfer) May 22, 2020
She just completed her fifth cycle and is scheduled for her final one June 12. But before her second treatment, the COVID-19 outbreak threw a wrench into the mix. Lulow's unit transitioned to solely caring for critically-ill patients with the virus, and she says she has nursed "some of the sickest patients I've ever seen."
So with Lulow's close proximity to infected patients and Kelly's compromised immune system from the surgery and chemo, the two have been forced to live separately for more than two months now. Kelly retreated to her childhood home in Fishers, living alone for a month and a half before her parents were able to return from their winter in Florida. (Once they did, all of them wore masks in the house for two weeks.) Kelly and Lulow have been able to interact and see one another through modern technology but not in person.
"It's been really tough not being able to physically be there for her while she's going through chemo," Lulow said. "As if battling cancer wasn't a challenge enough, throw in a pandemic that I am personally involved in on a daily basis. It's all just terrible timing. It does get very lonely being apart, and I can't imagine what she's really had to go through, having to deal with so much physically and mentally while living alone. She is definitely a fighter and handling this all with so much grace and strength."
A Role Model
Kelly has been focusing on her recovery, on spreading the word about ovarian cancer and on doing as much of her job as Woodland's assistant pro as she can from home. Once she's healthier and the virus clears up, she will be back to work at the course. But it's tough to keep a golf club out of her hand, and by the fifth week of her recovery she was hitting chip shots.
When she was 8 years old, her father converted one of the rooms in the family's basement for putting and chipping practice. Before leaving for the winter, he hung a net in the room to accommodate full swings. That net has come in handy. Kelly has spent lots of her time down there, building her way up from those chip shots to full swings.
"It's not the same practice," Kelly said. "I'm not able to put as much effort in yet. My swing doesn't look the same. The abdomen is such a big part of the golf swing, so there's some hesitation to turn through the golf ball. During chemo, my practice sessions are a lot shorter. It's the quality over the quantity. I might hit 15 golf balls, but that would be considered practice that day. My perspective has changed a little bit."
Taking advantage of the days that I have enough energy to figure out my golf game ?? I can't wait to play a round of golf someday ?? pic.twitter.com/lPhAImLUc8
— Brittany Kelly (@BrittTheGolfer) May 12, 2020
The week before she began chemo, Kelly was back in Muncie for the annual Indiana PGA Spring Business Meeting at the Horizon Convention Center. It was a big event for her. She picked up her player of the year award, and she was elected to the Indiana Section PGA Board of Directors. Callaway Golf and the company's Indiana sales rep Tim Diedrich presented her with a staff bag featuring her name and a teal ribbon in recognition of ovarian cancer awareness. They've also produced a special golf ball adorned with teal ribbons for her to play this year.
During that visit to Muncie, Kelly set aside time to meet with the current Ball State women's golfers, sharing insight about both her career and her current health battle. She did the same on a Zoom call with the team not long after the stay-at-home orders began. Like her initial unfamiliarity with ovarian cancer, Kelly was not always aware of the possibilities that existed for her in the game of golf outside of being a professional player. She wants to bring more awareness to those, too.
"Part of her mission is to help specifically female golfers understand what opportunities exist," Mowat said. "My team has played with her a few times; she's allowed us to come to the courses where she's worked. Almost all of them have been around her, and they respect her because she's a great player and doing great things in the profession for women and golf.
"She has been so incredibly strong through this which isn't surprising given just how strong she has always been. What has really been heartwarming is how willingly she has opened up. As soon as she started opening up, she realized what a platform she had. She has been an inspiration to all of us. I'm really proud of her for facing this like a champion."
Yesterday was full of tears at the Indiana Section PGA Annual Meeting. Thank you so much to Tim Diedrich and the Indiana PGA Board for the amazing support. I'm humbled beyond belief. ???? @callawaygolf @indianagolf @PGA #callaway #truvis #ovariancancerawareness #bkstrong pic.twitter.com/rbAAoLmN6l
— Brittany Kelly (@BrittTheGolfer) February 25, 2020
An Army of Support
Kelly remains deeply embedded in the Ball State program. One of her tour bags adorns the entrance way to the Cardinals' Earl Yestingsmeier Golf Center. And she represents BSU with pride wherever she plays.
She does the same with Woodland Country Club. The club supports her in her continued playing efforts, and she in turn gives the club and its members everything she has. Woodland's PGA Head Professional Patrick White calls her the glue that keeps everything together.
"I'd be hard-pressed to say she's not the heart and soul of our operation," White said.
That has not changed despite her current situation. She is dialed in from home, setting up online systems for tee times, leagues and events. She actively participates in virtual calls with the Woodland staff, still smiling, laughing and telling everyone she can't wait to be back with them soon. And she and White check in at least five times a day.
Kelly lived the life of a touring pro for two years after college before deciding to settle in on the club side of things as a PGA assistant golf professional, first at The Hawthorns in Fishers and now at Woodland where she has worked since 2017. And while she now focuses on teaching and growing the game, her position still offers her the chance to compete at a high level. And that is exactly what she has done. Once a competitor, always a competitor.
"She's the most goal-driven and determined individual I've ever had close experience with," White said. "What she's been able to accomplish on the course is a testament to that. She goes up against the guys, and she just whoops their butt every time she plays. There's no doubt she's going to do the same with cancer."
Coming off her phenomenal 2019 season, Kelly was primed for another big year in 2020. Those plans have temporarily been put on hold by both her recovery and by COVID-19. Tournaments have been pushed back or canceled altogether. But you can bet Kelly will be back to competition sooner than later and with an army of supporters like she has had through this whole experience.
From the members at Woodland to Ball State golfers past and present, from her PGA Cup teammates to old high school classmates, and from family to friends, Kelly has felt the love during her journey. She has received meals, flowers, phone calls and encouragement of all kinds to help her along.
She has received support from ovarian cancer survivors, and she has also had women tell her they scheduled appointments with their doctors based on her story. They've all been connections through the game of golf.
"I thought my network was fairly big going into this, but it has expanded even more," Kelly said. "You don't realize until you go through this how important the relationships you've built are. This has shown me how awesome people can be."
Many of her supporters are wearing special wristbands these days. Kelly's parents had them designed while she was recovering from surgery. They are teal, of course, emblazoned on one side with "BK Strong" and on the other with the words hope, strength and faith. Kelly asks only one thing of everyone who wears one: help spread awareness of the symptoms.
"Yes, it has my initials on it, but it's not about me; it's how can we help people in the future?" she said. "Hope, strength and faith. All three of those have helped me get to the point where I am now, and they're going to help me get through the rest of chemo and beat this cancer."
Bands have arrived! Thank you to my parents for ordering these. All I ask is if you wear one, you have to talk about the symptoms and spread awareness for ovarian cancer. #tealribbon #ovariancancerawareness #bkstrong @jonidkelly pic.twitter.com/3X54AKxO9c
— Brittany Kelly (@BrittTheGolfer) March 12, 2020
For more information about ovarian cancer and its symptoms, diagnosis and treatment, visit the American Cancer Society's ovarian cancer page at cancer.org.
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