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THE SPACE IN MY HEART

By Preston Haugh '21

By Bates College

January 30^th, 2021

It is the end of my junior year of high school, and my travel soccer team, the Arlington Soccer Association, is holding its annual tryouts. I can see the Pentagon from the field.

Arlington is a powerhouse club, having risen to No. 1 in the nation recently, and the coaches want to make sure the newcomers can handle the pressure.

I am a center midfielder and one of the more experienced players on the team. The coaches task me with giving one of the kids a hard time, just to see what he's about.

"Why don't you stick to that kid? Go give him a tackle or two and see what he does."

Preston Haugh '21 of Alexandria, Va. starred for Arlington Soccer Association in high school.

I lock in on a few kids. I run after this one guy and all of a sudden I can't see. My vision blurs and I have a hard time breathing. I put my hands on my knees and bend over. Then it goes away and I am fine.

I get the ball and start attacking. I take the first touch and start sprinting toward the goal with the ball, making an aggressive play. Then... same thing. Just can't see. I double over. My coaches are like, "Are you okay? What's going on?" and I have to come out.

The coaches think I'm dehydrated. They tell me to get water.

I get water. I am fine.

And then we go to full-sided games and I continue doing all right. The coaches sub me out of the game, and I go to sit down on the bench. Then all of a sudden I can't see again. My friend is sitting next to me, and I bat my hand at him and I pass out.

I wake up on the ground with people staring down at me. I don't know it yet, but my soccer career is over.

Growing up on the soccer pitch

By age 5, Preston Haugh was at home on the soccer pitch.

My mom's name is Astrid, and her side of the family is from Guatemala. My grandma worked for the World Bank and I don't think my mom was any more than 3 years old when they moved to the U.S. She never played, but her brother loves soccer. He's a big Arsenal fan, and my brother Garrett and I both became Arsenal fans because of him.

The Haugh family, from left: Garrett, Astrid, Kevin, and Preston.

My dad's name is Kevin. He's from Oklahoma. I don't think he has touched a soccer ball in his life. He tells me a story about how he was in school one time and they wheeled in a TV and put in a cassette. They played a video and it was of Pelé. My dad says, "Oh, I wish I could've played that. I wish I could've tried it out." But he was very much an American football player.

My mom didn't really want me to play football because my dad told so many stories about splitting his chin open. Even without football, I was fortunate to have opportunities to play lots of sports and other activities growing up: skiing, lacrosse, baseball, karate, basketball, and soccer.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say that I've been playing soccer since I could walk. I started playing before I can even remember playing. It just progressed throughout my whole life. I started out with rec soccer for a few years, and I got involved with some coaches who tried to push me further into more of the travel scene.

David Camara was the first coach who trained me one-on-one. I remember being so nervous that I actually missed the first training session. My dad had signed me up for it. I was just so embarrassed, so nervous, that I did not go. I hid in my room. I told my dad that I'd just keep training by myself, in my backyard. My dad said, "Oh, but he's very good and he's talented. He'll help you out a lot. He's so awesome."

My parents really support me. I don't have the chance to thank them enough. I don't have the means to say thank you as much as I mean it. I don't think I ever could. They've given me so many resources to be successful, and not just in terms of gear or "Here's this, we're going to go buy you all this stuff." It's more about the incredible people they've brought into my life — people who are just so genuine and good and who have given me incredible opportunities that have made me just so inspired.

Probably around age 7 or 8, I hopped on my first travel team, and from there I just rode that wave. I kept getting better.

I was always training with coaches outside of my team, and a lot of times I was on multiple teams at once. Just locally in Virginia, I'd have a main team and then I'd go guest play for other teams. I found myself all over the place.

Preston slides for the ball while playing for Lee Mount Vernon Sports Club.

There wasn't a big sibling rivalry with my brother. Garrett is a year younger than me and a goalie. Growing up, he was good target practice. We both got better for it. He's a junior at Tulane and they don't have a soccer team, but he's still playing for a semi-professional team, the 14th Ward Football Club.

As kids, we visited my mom's family and friends in Guatemala a lot. My brother and I would go out in the street with a soccer ball and find kids to play, whoever we could drag out of their houses. They have these boxed-in soccer fields — not stadiums, per se, but these little box lacrosse-esque fields. So we'd go and just mess around in there all the time. We'd be outside for hours, kicking it around the cul-de-sac and playing a little three-on-three.

Younger brother Garrett (left) is a goalkeeper and "made for good target practice" for center midfielder Preston growing up.

Regional, national, and international

Every year starting in middle school, I tried out for our regional Olympic Development Program team. The tryouts were at Rider University in New Jersey during the summer, and it was always scorching hot.

The program was super-regimented. Wake up at 7:00. Do your training. Go eat. Play games. Train again. Then more games.

If you played well enough during the day, you'd get invited into the pool group at the end of the day that would play in front of all the head coaches, and that's really where you had to make an impression.

Eventually, I did.

Preston (first row, fourth from left) experienced a lot of success in soccer, including this Virginia state championship with Arlington.

Twice I got to travel internationally with the Olympic Development Program, once to France at the end of middle school with the Virginia state team and once to Italy in high school with the regional team. They were easily two of the best experiences of my life.

I had never been to Europe before. France was awesome, seeing all these crazy chateaus and castles, things that you'd never imagine.

Thanks to soccer, Preston (left) got to travel to France in 8th grade and see "these crazy chateaus and castles, things that you'd never imagine."

We played two famous French soccer teams, the Tours Football Club and Olympique de Marseille. We didn't think we could hold a candle to them, but there we were playing with them.

In Italy, we played in one of the biggest tournaments in the world. It was just this incredible showing of international play.

The Iraqi national team was there. There were teams from Brazil, like Flamengo, and just these awesome, awesome teams. I think Roma was there; just teams that you would never really come into contact with otherwise.

That was just a different level of soccer. You really don't realize how different it is until you're up against these guys who are just flying through the field and you're trying to keep up and you're doing well and you're trying your hardest. You're going to grind it out and hopefully get a good result, put some respect to your country. You want to make everybody proud. It was the pinnacle of my soccer career.

Preston made the U.S. Olympic Development Program's Region I team and traveled to Italy to take on the likes of Brazil's Flamengo.

A sudden change

After I passed out on the soccer field, it took countless tests and two weeks in the hospital for the doctors to determine what was wrong. I had Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia .

ARVD impacts one in 5,000 people. It's a leading cause of sudden death among young athletes who are most at risk.

The doctors explained ARVD this way. The glue that holds my heart muscle cells together isn’t really strong. The muscles easily rip when they're under duress. Scar tissue forms when it heals, and that gets fixed with fatty tissues.

Then from there, it causes tachycardia. My heart can basically beat so fast that it doesn't pump my blood, and that’s because of the scars and the fatty tissue. Typically you have electricity that makes your heart pump, and then the electricity leaves. But mine gets stuck in the scar tissue and it can make a loop. So I get these weird fibrillations that are really dangerous.

Preston's father and mother with him in the hospital where he had an ICD installed after passing out on the soccer field.

They told me that any sort of cardio activity would be too dangerous. I kind of looked at them and I said, “Oh, so no more soccer.” And they said, “No, sorry.” And I said, “Okay.”

Then everybody left the room. Even my parents left the room.

I cried.

I think I gave myself 10 minutes to kind of bawl, and then I paused and said, “All right. We’re good. What's next?”

What was next at that moment was surgery. I needed an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, and I needed it right away.

They gave me the ICD and said, “Yeah, this thing is going to save your life.” I left the hospital the next morning. It was life-changing.

It goes off when my heart rate is way too high, whether it be due to irregular rhythm or because it's stuck in that tachycardic state, which would be dangerous for me. At that point, it gives me a shock — that's not fun. If it shocks me more than once, I have to go to the hospital.

But back to that all-important question: What was next?

As much as academics mean to me, it can't fully sustain me. It just is not enough. I needed something. I missed all my friends and missed the opportunities that came with being around all these other people, being on a team, competing and excelling.

Hitting the links

So I took up golf.

Preston learned to golf after some early struggles, going from shooting 115 to shooting in the 70s over the course of a year.

Oh man I was terrible when I first started a few months after my surgery. My high school's golf season was in the spring, so I still had almost a whole year to prepare.

I worked pretty hard. I went and played a tournament in Florida maybe three months before I actually graduated. I shot like 115, basically a double bogey on each hole.

In soccer you have 11 players trying to score one goal, whereas in golf it's you against the course.

I don’t want to diminish the team aspects of golf, because they’re very much there and very important. They’re just different. I’d say that’s definitely what I found to be the most strange.

It’s just the craziest game. You’ll leave the course feeling terrible, but if you make one good contact, one good swing, you have a good feeling. You’re like, “All right. Golf is horrible. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

My dad was crucial in helping me find ways to improve. Just like with soccer years earlier, he found my first golf coach, a man named Jeff Lee, who has a golf shop nearby.

At this point, my dream was to somehow play golf in college. Again, my dad was there for me. He told me that he'd found a golf academy in Florida. He said that he and my mom would support me if I wanted to take a gap year to get better at golf.

I visited the academy for a week. Even though I learned a lot, I was still hitting the ball pretty poorly. Nothing was clicking.

So it was the last day, and everyone else had left.

Then one of the instructors, Ronnie McCann, called over to me. Ronnie is from South Africa and played a few PGA Tour events in the 1990s. He's played professionally in South Africa and in Europe. He later caddied for John Daly.

He said, “Hey, Preston. Come over with me. We’ll sit.” And he sat there with me for an extra two hours after he's been working since 7 a.m. And now it was 7 p.m. He said, “I never want any student to leave me feeling like they didn’t learn anything and that they aren’t hitting the ball better than when they started."

Preston with Matt Fields (left) and Ronnie McCann (right), Haugh's golf coaches during his gap year in Florida, where he won three awards, including most improved golfer at the academy.

I chose to attend the academy because I knew it was structured and it was going to be good for me and I was going to learn a lot. And I went because of Ronnie McCann — he's just an incredible player, coach, and person. So genuine.

And that gap year was the best year of my life. I met so many awesome people, so many cool players. I met so many professional golfers and just great friends.

Remember when I went down to that tournament and shot 115? After three months in the academy, I went back to the same tournament on the same course and shot 85, and 83. By the end of my year in Florida I was shooting in the 70s.

I got good enough to play in college, and that was my ultimate goal.

Preston tees off at the IMG Junior Golf Tour.

Preston Haugh with PGA golfer Rickie Fowler.

Becoming a Bobcat

Tufts had been recruiting me for soccer, so I knew about the NESCAC. I reached out to NESCAC schools regarding golf and eventually connected with then-head coach James Upham at Bates. He saw my scores and saw my grades and encouraged me to apply.

I ended up visiting Bates and I loved it. It was awesome. I could go to this good school and be able to play some golf and compete and hopefully be part of something special. That’s how it all came together.

Preston was named captain of the Bates men's golf team in 2020.

I am an economics major and I care about both academics and sports wholeheartedly. It was very refreshing to meet people at Bates that cared equally as much.

There have been some memorable moments at Bates on the golf course. The 2018 New England Intercollegiate Golf Association tournament at the Captains Golf Course on Cape Cod is a big one. It was the single windiest tournament that I’ve played in. And on the first day, it rained. But I put together just a great round, a 79. It’s amazing how golf in tough conditions makes you just so tired. Our team was just drained after the round. The conditions were like playing in Scotland, and I was very proud of the way I played.

And then the next day, one of our guys, Jim Stevens ’20, shot one of his best tournament scores ever, 78 — our lowest score of the two days. For everyone else, it was another tough day, but we were just so hyped up for him. We still talk about it, like, “Oh man, so-and-so on tour doesn't hold a candle to Jimbo’s 78 after Round Two at the Captains.”

College golf is great that way. It’s so individual, but you kind of internalize your teammates’ battles, too.

You just become so impassioned by the fact that you've been working really hard with these people and you care so much about them, and want them to do their best just as much as you want to do your best for them.

So after I'm done with my round, I’ll walk back out on the course and support my friends who are still playing. And when our last player reaches the 18th green, we’re all going to be right there to cheer for him.

The Bobcats have some fun at their pre-season photo shoot in 2019.

Learning to learn

There was a learning curve with my ICD. I actually broke the first one the summer before my first semester at Bates. It was in my chest and when I golfed, my collarbone pushed on it, so one of the wires broke. I had to have surgery to get it taken out. It was beeping at me through my chest. It sounded like an ambulance. It was horrible.

So now it’s on my side and it just goes over my chest just under the skin. It definitely works. It's shocked me four times since I've been in college.

I lost my senior year of golf at Bates due to the pandemic, but I know that golf will be part of my life going forward.

Henry Fall is the Bates golf coach now and he’s been great. He has a very well-trained eye. He has so many great techniques and visions of how a golf swing should work and how you should work your way around the course. I also love the passion he brings to the program.

I also keep in touch with Ronnie McCann. He teaches a much different way than Henry, and they actually teach different golf swings.

The deeper I get into the game, the more I realize that I have to learn how to learn in golf.

Learning to get better at golf, says Preston Haugh, is "not just seeing. It’s not just listening. It's finding a feeling of what is proper and right."

It’s not just seeing. It’s not just listening. It's finding a feeling of what is proper and right, because sometimes you can get away with just being athletic and trying to make something happen. Other times, you really have to be clinical and very precise with how you are setting yourself up.

I try to mesh different views and guidances. What are they trying to get at here? What is the purpose behind this? What am I trying to feel so that I can do this? What am I trying to do with the ball? What do I need to do with the club here and why? Why are they telling me this? It’s been interesting to learn how to learn.

I tell people playing golf and watching golf is kind of like drinking a beer. It’s an acquired taste. Until you know, you don’t really know. Now I watch golf and I’m like, “Okay, that was impressive. I appreciate that. I know how difficult that was.”

Preston and teammate Andrew Garcia-Bou '20 walk the course at Martindale Country Club in Auburn, Maine.

Not one or the other

I still watch soccer all the time.

My brother is just crazy about it. He’s a No. 1 American Arsenal fanboy. I don’t even necessarily need to turn on the TV. He's just in my ear, like, “Oh, Arsenal did this, Arsenal did that.” He’s always spewing stuff off on Twitter.

I watch games all the time with him and my uncle. Probably one of the biggest things I miss from before the pandemic is going out on Sundays in the late mornings and watching the Arsenal games with my uncle and brother along with other rowdy fans at local sports bars. I miss those days a lot.

Soccer or golf? Preston has a passion for both.

I don't like comparing my enjoyment of golf and soccer. I have a love for them both and one definitely does not replace the other. When I could no longer play soccer, I just made room for golf.

They both fill the same space in my heart.

Footnotes

As told to Aaron Morse. Photos courtesy of the Haugh family. Additional photography by Theophil Syslo/Bates College and Brewster Burns for Bates College.

Button Label

FootNotes

As told to Aaron Morse. Photos courtesy of the Haugh family. Additional photography by Theophil Syslo/Bates College and Brewster Burns for Bates College.