How Maddi Got Her Groove Back

She was a three-time All-American, a three-time conference champion, a former NAIA Golfer of the Year.

Yet Maddi Kamas didn’t know if she was going to play golf her senior season at Oklahoma City University.

It wasn’t from burnout. It wasn’t due to lack of desire.

It had everything to do with physical capability.

“If you had asked me in early January if I was going to play in the spring, I would have said ‘heck no,’” said Kamas, the 2021 Kingfisher High School graduate who won the Class 4A state championship her senior season and led her KHS team to a runner-up finish.

Despite doubting her ability to play in January, there was Kamas in late April receiving the Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament championship trophy for a remarkable fourth time in her career.

The trophy represented more than three rounds of golf. It substantiated the years of pain, multiple surgeries and months of rehabilitation to get back to that trophy presentation.

••• After Kamas finished up a top-10 finish at the 2024 NAIA National Championship in Silvis, Ill., she was so sore she could barely walk.

Six straight days of walking a minimum of 18 holes - two practice rounds and four competition rounds had taken its toll on her right knee, which had already experienced two surgeries.

One was in 2015, before Kamas began her high school career at KHS, and the other in 2021, which was her freshman year at college.

Both “scopes” were attempts to repair cartilage deterioration in her knee that was being caused by an alignment issue.

“It was bone on bone, which is what caused all my pain,” Kamas said of her knee. “Any time I squatted, went up stairs or hills or got out of bed with too much weight on my right knee, I would experience a sharp stabbing pain in the back of my knee.”

The goal of the 2021 surgery was to “rejuvenate” the cartilage by drilling small canals in her tibia to draw out bone marrow in hopes of stimulating cartilage growth.

“It failed, obviously,” Kamas said.

Yet she endured and carried over the success she experienced at Kingfisher High School to Oklahoma City University.

She won multiple individual tournaments in each of her first three seasons, was named the Sooner Athletic Conference Golfer of the Week 10 times and the NAIA Golfer of the Week four times.

But despite another successful run at the NAIA national tournament as a junior, one in which OCU was the national runner-up, Kamas knew she couldn’t endure much more.

“After that, I knew that I didn’t want to push through that in the fall and be miserable, so we decided to see a few doctors,” Kamas said.

The first four doctors all wanted to replace the cartilage.

The fifth envisioned a more extensive approach.

“He thought my alignment needed to be straightened, or I would end up back at square one with worn down cartilage,” Kamas said. “So we decided to go with the ‘big’ procedure to fix it all.”

The “big” procedure was a distal femoral osteotomy, which was performed on Kamas’ right knee in August 2024.

It consisted of sawing her right femur - almost in half - and placing a bone wedge to straighten it by 7 degrees.

Doctors then inserted a plate and seven screws and Kamas now sports a six-inch scar.

It was as painful as it sounds and, said Kamas, so was the recovery and rehabilitation.

“This was my third surgery, so I knew the basics, but I was nowhere near prepared for what this would bring,” she said.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through both mentally and physically.”

Kamas couldn’t put any weight on her knee for two months.

“I essentially lost all my glute, calf and quad muscle,” she said. “I had to learn to walk again, where with the other surgeries, it was a more natural recovery process.”

She began her physical therapy right after the surgery, but wasn’t seeing much progress after a few months.

“I decided to switch and when I did, I started to see huge progress in just one month, which really helped me mentally, too,” she said.

Her therapy sessions focused on gaining back her muscle and mobility while limiting discomfort.

“I experienced a lot of pain the first few months, so we adjusted to do what was best for me while trying to get back to golf as quickly as possible,” she said.

But in January, five months after surgery, Kamas thought she had no shot of recovering in time for the looming spring golf season.

But she continued to work and three weeks before OCU’s first scheduled tournament, her physical therapist told her three important words: “Yes you can.” So on Feb. 24, Kamas teed it up at The Trailblazer in Las Vegas.

Despite playing in literally dozens and dozens of tournaments, including state and national championships, this one was different.

“I was really scared, which is something I had never felt quite like that before,” Kamas admits.

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack on the first hole. My heart was literally pounding and I was shaking beyond control.

“I could barely hold a club.”

Kamas played through what she called “many nerve-racking tears.”

It wasn’t her best golf she shot an 13-over-par 85, but that wasn’t as important as something else.

“I wanted to prove to myself that I could finish,” she said.

Kamas came back the next day to shoot a 1-overpar 73 and finished 10th in the tournament.

She played March 17-18 at the Kyle Blaser Invitational at Gaillardia Country Club in Oklahoma City and tied for 12th.

“The first few tournaments were really tough. It didn’t help that the weather early in the spring wasn’t great, so I couldn’t spend a lot of time practicing, which is what I needed,” Kamas said.

“Instead, I just kind of jumped into competing in tournament golf. Ultimately, I think I needed that because I was going to have to get back to competing at some point.”

Once she got past her nerves, Kamas said she was able to “focus more on the golf and less on the mental side of it.”

Aiding her in the first two tournaments was the fact the golfers could use carts.

Then came the Ozarks National Invitational, which was held March 2426 at Branson, Mo.

It was time to walk since the 2024 national tournament.

“I was a little nervous to see how my knee would hold up walking 72 holes,” she said.

“But it went really smooth, which helped me gain a lot of confidence back knowing I could do that.”

Everything else was coming back into form as well, she said.

“I hit the ball pretty well and even though I didn’t score great, I was able to tell that was the point that I was finally getting my game back,” Kamas said.

She tied for 16th in the tournament after shooting rounds of 78, 79 and 75 on the par-72 course, but it was the confidence that she walked away with that bolstered her attitude.

“I told myself if I could do that (walk 72 holes), it was smooth sailing from there,” she said.

Kamas shot a combined 9-over-par at a tournament in Georgia in mid-April before it was time to return home for the SAC Tournament, with this year’s version to be held at Twin Hills Country Club in Oklahoma City.

Not only was Kamas the three-time defending champ, but so was her OCU team.

Make it four in a row for both.

OCU was plus-40 over the three rounds, defeating Texas Wesleyan, the runner-up, by 11 strokes. Third place was well back at plus-180.

As for Kamas, she opened up with an even-par 72 to open the tournament on April 28.

She followed up with rounds of 75 and 74 and was tied with teammate Logan Allen for the individual title.

The two returned to the 18th hole for a playoff and each recorded a par.

They played the hole again and this time Allen bogeyed the hole. Kamas sank her par putt for the win.

It was Kamas’ 14th individual championship for the Stars.

“It’s been an awesome four years and I have made so many memories that I’ll cherish forever,” she said. “We have an awesome group of girls that I’m able to call my best friends, so it’s been really neat to do it all with them by my side.”

Kamas still wasn’t done as a Star. She and her teammates traveled to Ypsilanti, Mich., to take part in the NAIA National Championship from May 13-16.

In her final event, Kamas tied for 13th and her team was 11th.

Her season helped earn her NAIA All-American second-team status, her fourth year to pick up the honor (she was first team each of her first three years).

She did it all while still going to physical therapy twice a week, something she’ll continue at least through the summer.

“So essentially it will be one year of physical therapy,” Kamas said. “I am still working on getting complete bend back in my knee.”

The work she put in - and her results - weren’t lost on her head coach.

“After knee surgery, I wasn’t expecting for her to come back as well as she did,” admits OCU women’s golf coach Josh Gorzney. “All of those hours of rehab, recovery, team workouts and doing extra physical therapy.

“The time recovering showed,” he added, mentioning her conference championship and top-15 finish at nationals.

“We were very lucky to have Maddi Kamas as a Star for four years,” said Gorzney.

Kamas had another signifi cant event in May. She graduated OCU with a degree in business administration.

An honors student going into OCU and throughout her tenure, she earned magna cum laude honors with her 3.803 GPA.

And, as it turns out, Kamas isn’t done yet with collegiate golf.

Last December, the NCAA announced a temporary waiver granting an extra year of eligibility to certain former athletes including those in NAIA - whose eligibility would have expired at the end of this academic year.

The waiver allows them to compete in the 2025-26 season at an NCAA institution.

Kamas falls into that category and started weighing her option. She was offered multiple full-ride scholarships to play golf and work toward her master’s degree.

She eventually chose Abilene Christian University and will be a Wildcat and playing at the Division I level in the fall.

Beyond that? “It depends on how next year’s season goes and what I accomplish,” Kamas said.

“I may try to pursue a professional career. I still have a long road to recovery, but I have seen so much improvement in the last few months, so I’m really excited about the opportunity to play golf for one more year and see what I’m capable of at the next level.”