When Maria Jose Uribe plays, it’s hard not to watch.
The sophomore golfer fist pumps like her idol Tiger Woods after making clutch putts and talks to her ball in Spanish.
“I think I’m really intense and emotional on the golf course,” Uribe said. “It’s just reactions that I have. It’s not that I think of them.”
Her intensity has certainly paid off.
Even before she arrived at UCLA, the native from Bucaramanga, Colombia defeated Duke’s three-time Player of the Year Amanda Blumenherst to win the 2007 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship.
She followed that up with an impressive freshman campaign in which she earned first-team All-American honors, was ranked as high as No. 9 nationally by Golfweek and totaled six top-10 finishes. She was also a co-medalist at two different tournaments, competed in all four professional majors as an amateur and has been on the Director’s Honor Roll every quarter since she enrolled. She’s even beaten Lorena Ochoa and Christie Kerr, two of the world’s top professional golfers.
“I’m a perfectionist,” Uribe said. “Whatever I do, I have to do it the right way.”
And for that exact reason, Uribe will end her collegiate golf career and leave UCLA at the end of the season.
One day Uribe will turn pro, but professional aspirations are not the only reason why she’s going home.
For Uribe, golf is simply a means to an end.
In the future, professional golf will allow her to acquire the resources to help kids from her native Colombia ““ kids like Carolina, Sergio, Gabriel and David.
FORE
Winning the U.S. Amateur was not just another tournament trophy on the shelf, nor was it just another victory on her long list of accolades.
With the win, the name Maria Jose Uribe became one that her fellow Colombians recognized and admired. And Uribe wanted to use this newfound fame to help people.
Uribe started her own foundation, FORE, which helps underprivileged kids in rural towns of Colombia. FORE builds libraries in these towns and provides after-school programs for the children, including tutorials on Internet use, dance classes and art classes. The foundation recently introduced a sports program with basketball and soccer.
Uribe said that FORE was basically her family foundation. She started the organization with the support of her father. Her older sister Silvia Uribe, currently the president of FORE, is working on getting donations and traveling to a lot of small towns in Colombia searching for sites to build libraries.
“Maria is very socially conscious,” coach Carrie Forsyth said. “This is Maria’s project. She put this together ““ it was her idea, her desire. She puts a lot of work and time into it. Of all the things she does, that’s an incredibly exceptional and giving mindset for a girl so young, her age. She really cares about that, she’s already trying to give back to her community.”
Roughly translated from Spanish, FORE stands for Formation and Organization for Recreational and Educational opportunities.
“At the same time, the meaning of “˜fore’ in golf is to catch somebody’s attention, to move forward,” Uribe said. “It kind of makes sense (with) what we want to do.”
While the foundation is based in Colombia, Uribe wants to promote it in the U.S. for fund-raising.
The golfer draws inspiration for such a project from Ochoa, who started her own foundation early in her career, and from her experience at UCLA.
“I met her four years ago, but (the U.S. Open) was the first time we got close,” Uribe said. “She’s such a good person. I admire her more now that I know her more closely.”
As member of The Bruin Athletic Council, Uribe had done extensive volunteer work with Mattel Children’s Hospital, Marathon Kids and Team Prime Time.
“It opened my mind and I realized that (helping people is) going to make me happy and not my success on the golf course,” Uribe said. “I can use that to give opportunity to other people.”
Uribe said that a lot of the problems with youth violence in Colombia stem from kids not having anything to do after school.
FORE currently has two centers in Jiron and Pamplona. The foundation is working to build venues in five more towns.
The foundation built its first center in Jiron, where Uribe’s family was born.
“(The kids) know my family,” Uribe said. “They can see that you can do it too. You don’t have to be from the upper class to be successful.”
A celebrity in Colombia, Uribe sometimes drops by the center to hang out with the kids, even taking dance classes with them. She also brings famous Colombian athletes to the venues to visit the children.
The kids Uribe works with the most at the centers are the athletes: Carolina, a cross-country runner; Sergio, a table-tennis player; Gabriel, a baseball player; and David, a soccer player.
The foundation tries to utilize its resources to nourish them in their sports, including finding trainers, teams, practice space and sports psychologists for the kids.
Uribe relates to these kids, ages 10-14, because of their dedication to their sport.
“They already know what they want,” Uribe said. “They are really serious about their sport.”
Perhaps the athlete most similar to Uribe herself is David, the soccer player.
“He’s so passionate about (soccer) that he is a perfectionist,” Uribe said. “He works really hard and gets really mad when other kids are not working as hard.”
Having played soccer in her childhood, Uribe said that she understands where David’s frustrations come from when playing a team-oriented sport like soccer.
“I relate to him,” Uribe said. “I was like that when I was his age. He just needs to get a little bit more mature, he’s really stubborn right now. He’s a good talent. He has to open his eyes to the world.”
Uribe said that her foundation is exposing these kids, especially the athletes, to opportunities in the U.S. through athletic scholarships, ideas that never occurred to them.
Leaving UCLA
Last month, Uribe announced that she will leave UCLA at the end of her season. Golfweek stated that the sophomore’s reason for leaving is to pursue a professional career, but there’s more to it than that.
“It was not a decision that took one day,” Uribe said. “I’ve been thinking about it since summer, some family issues I’m trying to work with while I’m at UCLA ““ it’s just getting too overwhelming. It’s just personal reasons why I’m going back to Colombia.”
Uribe said that being a perfectionist might have contributed to her decision to leave Westwood.
“Whatever I do, I want to be good at it,” Uribe said. “I was basically trying to do three things at the same time and wasn’t doing anything the right way or as good as I wanted to. Being a student-athlete demands a lot from you, and I didn’t have that to give.”
Uribe left home at age 14 when the International Junior Golf Academy in Hilton Heads Island, S.C. offered her a scholarship after noticing her in a tournament. She briefly returned to Colombia to finish her education at Colegio de Panamericano before starting her freshman year at UCLA.
Even though she spent her high school years at a school with a rigorous golf program, the notion of playing professional golf did not occur to Uribe because education was very important in her family.
Uribe said that the U.S. Amateur Championship made her finally realize that golf was her passion and she was ready to establish a golf career.
Now, after years of deciding between school and golf, Uribe comes back in full circle to her roots in Colombia before opening a new chapter in her life of playing golf full-time.
“I have been out (of home) for five years already,” Uribe said. “I have to get in touch with my culture again.”
Uribe said that FORE is one of the factors taking her home.
“Turning pro is my dream, but it’s not only because I want to turn pro,” Uribe said. “I love the game, but the game is what’s going to take me to my real goal ““ that is the foundation and helping people, helping the Colombian community. If I really want to help the Colombian community I have to go back and actually build all those relationships again.”
Uribe said that coming to UCLA was a good experience for her and that the team felt like her family away from home. She said that Forsyth is like a mom to her.
“Everybody have been really supportive,” Uribe said. “(Coach) told me that was the right thing to do right now. Our relationship hasn’t changed either with my teammates or with coach. We are still as close as we were before.”
Even with the All-American’s impending departure, Uribe and the Bruins still have the NCAA Regional Championships and the NCAA Championship to think about.
“I’ve usually dealt really (well) with not putting pressure on myself with stuff like that,” Uribe said. “Coach was saying like, just look at like it is Maria’s senior year.”
Uribe said that she is still proud of the Bruins and that her imminent departure will not be an issue with how she plays in the postseason.
“I’m just trying to do my best, I’m still working for the team, I still care about the university.” Uribe said. “I don’t have to show anybody that I still care about UCLA. The only people who have to know are my teammates and my coach.”
Before Uribe can say “No hay lugar como el hogar” ““ “There’s no place like home” ““ she’s going to have to take care of business for the Bruins this week at the NCAA Regionals.
She’s probably going to talk to her ball in Spanish and pump her fist like Tiger. It’d be hard not to watch her.
But at the end of the day, no matter what she scores in a tournament, Maria Jose Uribe will continue helping and providing opportunities for kids at FORE, so that perhaps a Carolina, a Sergio, a Gabriel or a David will catch your attention someday.