Eye of the Storm Award - Tyler Swanson

[jackrabbit21]

ISU had their Scholar-Athlete Award Banquet last night. ISU golfer Tyler Swanson, who survived a horrific car accident while at ISU was given the Eye of the Storm Award for overcoming adversity and being a inspiration to other students.

Here is a great 10 min video of Tyler's story.

Before his accident Tyler was as good a golfer as ISU has ever had. To give you an idea of his talent, in 2003 he made the field at the PGA Tour John Deere Classic and was 5th in the field in Driving Distance that week. He was the first amateur to make the cut in that event since 1971 and was the first cyclone golfer to ever make a cut at a PGA Tour event.

[Phaedrus]

Thanks for the great post. This is a cool story.

[cyclonewinger]

Going to a golf camp quite a ways back i actually got to play with him. He was unbelievable and would have made the PGA circuit pretty easy. very impressive kid and golfer

[theshadow]

There was a second golfer in that car, too -- Curtis Foster. He wasn't as badly injured, but still screwed up his back pretty good. I don't think Curtis ever got back to his pre-injury level on the course.

[cyclonewinger]

that is correct, but he did continue to actually golf for the team.

[cloneu]

Just watched the video, great video to watch. It doesn't seem like it has been that long since that accident happened.

[iowast_nate]

A series in the ISU Daily on this story from Dec. of 2004... The Daily also had multimedia with it which was pretty cutting edge at the time, but it looked like the link to it was gone in the archives.

Part 1
Driven off course - Sports

Part 2
A late-night phone call - News

Part 3
On the road to recovery - News

Part 4
Getting back on par - Hot Topics