Acts of Excellence: Pine Ridge teen brings Golf to the Reservation

From Potato Fields to Pinehurst, Pine Ridge teen brings Golf to the Reservation.

Lance Christensen, a 17-year-old senior from the Pine Ridge Reservation is one of the best golfers in all of South Dakota. A prodigy since childhood, he was on the fast track to play at the 2020 High School Golf National Invitational at North Carolina’s Pinehurst Resort.

But a basketball injury, breaking his collarbone, put all of that on hold. Lance considers himself one of the lucky residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation. His parents are both college-educated with good jobs. So the pitfalls of extreme poverty, depression, and gang involvement had never made their way into Lance’s life.

But this basketball injury had completely derailed his training for golf, and it felt like the world was collapsing in on him. After feeling the effects of depression for the first time in his life, Lance’s eyes were opened on a deeper level to what many of his Lakota peers were facing in life on the reservation.

Via South Dakota Hall of Fame