Eight-year-old Staci Aber looked up to older brother John and realized if she wanted to spend some time with him, she was going to have to follow him to the golf course.
“And he was nice enough to let me tag along,” recalled Aber, who would tee off with her brother and his friends.
Aber, who is now Staci Creech after marrying current University of Maine athletic director Karlton Creech 17 years ago, also liked the fact golf was “something I could do by myself if there was nobody else to play with.”
Since there were very few girls playing at the time, she found herself competing with boys.
“They were nice enough to let me play along with them. I tried to beat them. That made me a better player,” said Creech, who played regularly at the Greensburg Country Club in Pennsylvania.
“We had a lot of fun days playing golf,” said brother John Aber. “She was very determined even when she was young.”
Creech is having a memorable season playing golf in Maine this summer.
She has entered three Women’s Maine State Golf Association tournaments and won all three. She set the women’s course record with a one-over-par 71 at the Hidden Meadows Golf Course in Old Town.
The 42-year-old Creech finished in a tie for third at the New England Women’s Amateur Golf Tournament at the Ledgemont Country Club in Seekonk, Massachusetts, behind Nathalie Filler, who will be a senior at the University of Delaware, and Jacquelyn Eleey, who will be sophomore at Georgetown University.
“I was very pleased with the first 45 holes but I wish I had putted better over the last nine holes. My putter left me,” said Creech, who played the final round with Filler and Eleey.
She pointed out that their combined age is still younger than hers.
When Creech got to Greensburg Central Catholic High School, she wound up playing on the boys team because they didn’t have a girls team. She started all four years.
There was a state individual tournament for girls and she won two of them (1989 and 1991).
She and John took golf lessons from former PGA and PGA Senior Tour player Jim Ferree.
“We learned a lot from him. He was very much a traditionalist. He was a great role model for me and my brother. We still keep in touch with him,” said Staci, whose father, John, was also an avid golfer.
Ferree had attended the University of North Carolina, so that’s where John decided to go to school.
“Jim enticed John to go to North Carolina and John enticed me to go to go there. I was all set to go to the University of Kentucky but when I visited there in March, it was snowing. I decided to go where it was warmer,” said Creech, who received a golf scholarship.
She had an impressive career at UNC. She helped lead the team to a second-place finish at the 1994 Atlantic Coast Conference championship. She finished third individually and led the team in stroke average that season.
It was at UNC where she met her future husband.
“Karlton was working in the golf shop. It was his summer job. I was a sophomore,” she said. “We used to have to go in through the golf shop to get to our locker room. I thought he was cute and I was interested in him but I didn’t think he had any interest.
“One day he told me a bunch of the golf staff members were going out and they needed a representative from the women’s golf team,” she added. “I was naive. I said great, I’ll see if my teammate Meredith could go. Meredith told me it was his way of asking me out.
“The next day I told him the women’s golf team was going out that night and we needed a member of the golf course staff to go with us. He chuckled.”
They dated for five years before marrying. Karlton Creech used to watch as many of her matches as he could.
Staci Creech said golf has never come easy to her, but she is extremely competitive
“I wanted to be the best junior golfer at our club, the best girls player in western Pennsylvania and the best player in the state,” she said.
“She has the killer instinct in her,” Aber said. “She wants to win. She wants to do well. But she doesn’t show anger. Growing up playing golf with me and my friends helped her competitiveness.
“The boys in high school hated played against her because she would beat them. She was really competitive. She didn’t give in,” he added.
Creech never gave the Ladies Professional Golf Association any consideration.
“I was realistic. Even though I was a pretty good amateur player, I definitely didn’t hit it far enough. Some of the other women would hit it 20 to 40 yards farther than me. I could reach the holes in regulation. My strength was my short game and it still is,” she said. “Besides, unless you were in the top 10, you didn’t make much money. And I didn’t want to be on the road every weekend.”
“She loves the game and knows how to get around a golf course and get the ball in the hole,” Karlton Creech said. “She plays for the right reasons. And she loves to compete.”
She thoroughly enjoys being on a golf course and said her husband has been a good luck charm when he caddies for her.
“He keeps me calm and we have fun. He has all the numbers so I don’t have to think, I just have to hit the shot,” said Staci, who graduated with a degree in education from UNC and has her real estate license. She does work for real estate agent Emily Ellis at Berkshire Hathaway in Bangor.
She is also the volunteer assistant coach for the first Husson University women’s golf team, which will begin play this fall.
“I’m excited about that,” she said. “I think it’s great to give girls an opportunity to play college golf at the Division III level and get an education.”
Her next challenge will be the Maine Women’s Amateur Golf Tournament at the Biddeford-Saco Country Club on July 27-29.