Charlottesville, Va. – Virginia women’s golf coach Ria Scott announced today (Feb. 10) the addition of Allie Kantor (Milton, Ga.) to the program starting in the fall of 2021.

A successful junior competitor, Kantor was named the 2020 American Junior Golf Association’s Jerry Cole Sportsmanship Award recipient last December. She helped to raise more than $7,000 for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta through the Leadership Links program.

On the course, Kantor won the Peggy Kirk Bell Rocket Tour Players Championship at UGA in 2020 and had a top-10 finish at the 2020 AJGA Stewart Cink Junior Championship. She competed in the 2020 AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions.

At Blessed Trinity Catholic High School, she earned all-state honors as a sophomore and was her team’s MVP three seasons. She was the winner of the Positive Athlete Regional Award for North Atlanta and nominated for the 2021 U.S. Presidential Scholars Program.

“As we got to know Allie, we learned that she is an exceptional human being,” Scott said. “She had the discipline, toughness and patience to overcome some physical challenges, and then turned herself into a high-performing student-athlete.  Allie is poised, hard-working and has vibrant personality.  We cannot wait to see how she impacts our team and University.”

Kantor’s personal road to playing competitive golf is an amazing story after she was diagnosed with scoliosis as a teenager at the age of 13. She missed several years of competition while undergoing bracing treatments. Through a rigorous and disciplined routine, and the help of some breakthrough bracing technology, she was able to return to the game in 2017. Afterwards, she helped to fundraise to help an Atlanta-based physician with his research and data collection efforts to provide better treatments for the condition.

• Watch the AJGA Jerry Cole Sportsmanship Award presentation.