(Photo Credit: BlueHens.com)
By Alex Baker
NEWARK, Del. – Nick Vecellio was two years old when his golf journey began. His grandpa made him two clubs, a driver and a putter. “They go up to about my knee now, so they’re pretty small,” joked Vecellio. Now, at 23, the clubs are much longer but golf remains a huge part of his life.
Vecellio is a fifth-year senior at the University of Delaware, and a captain on the varsity Men’s Golf team. In this, his final year at the school, Vecellio and his teammates set records, tying the program’s single round team record at 274 strokes. The Blue Hens finished the season last weekend with a fifth-place finish in the CAA Championship, one spot better than last year.
“I was kind of struggling with certain aspects of [my game] and I’ve been putting a lot of work in,” said Vecellio of his spring season, “I feel like I finally rounded a corner.”
Always eager to improve, Vecellio has been refining his golf game since he began competing at 12 years old. He comes from a family of golfers, including his dad and grandparents. They encouraged him to play and instilled in him a love of the game.
This love of competitive golf continued into high school, where he was a district qualifier all four years, as well as a state championship qualifier. Vecellio wanted to take the next step and play at the collegiate level. Offers came in from a few Division 2 and 3 colleges, but they didn’t quite fit what he had in mind. Instead, Vecellio decided to come to the University of Delaware and study chemical engineering. When he arrived, he joined the club golf team.
“I was kind of a late bloomer. I started getting what I thought was pretty good after high school,” noted Vecellio who played club golf for three years. In that time, Vecellio’s late bloom helped him become the team’s leading scorer and record top ten finishes in 12 of 15 tournaments. In his third year he even became club president. “I was really involved, I met a lot of great friends through it,” said Vecellio. “It was really cool, it was a lot less pressure. Especially with chemical engineering, it was so much work and I really had no time management skills from high school,” he joked.
Vecellio switched to mechanical engineering part-way through his college career, one of a few major changes he would go through. In the fall of 2017, he sent an email to the new heads of the men’s varsity golf program, Patty Post, Brendan Post, and Peter Ireland. In the email he asked if he could try out for the team. The previous coach, Mike Keogh, had no interest in walk-on’s, but the new coaches gave him a shot. “They said, ‘oh yeah come in, you look like you get good grades, you look like you work hard, we’ll take you for a tryout’,” explained Vecellio. He impressed in that tryout round and joined the team. “I absolutely love it, it’s so much fun. I enjoy working on my golf game,” said Vecellio of his experience on the varsity squad. Since then, he has played many competitive rounds for the Blue Hens and was chosen by his teammates to serve as a team captain for the 2018-2019 season.
It has been a long road for Nick Vecellio. “I’ve come a long way in a year and a half,” he said with a smile on his face. Now, coming toward the end of his collegiate golf journey, Vecellio reflects on his first competitive rounds at 12 years old, “I loved it, absolutely loved it. And I still love it to this day.”