If you get off of I-75 Exit 11 and begin heading toward downtown Williamsburg, you will likely notice a sign on the side of the road announcing that this is the home of Becky Sharpe, the 2015 women’s state amateur golf champion. That sign has stood in place for the past decade to let people know that, among the many great athletes that have come out of Williamsburg over the years, Sharpe, now Becky Sharpe-Mitchell, is among the most accomplished.
“It feels like a blur,” Sharpe-Mitchell said when reflecting on everything that has transpired since she won her state amateur title at the Danville Country Club in the summer of 2015. “Time goes by so fast. I didn’t even realize that it was the ten-year anniversary.”
Sharpe-Mitchell began playing golf at the age of ten. She played through high school, graduating from Williamsburg Independent School in the spring of 2012. From there, she went on to enjoy a very successful career at Eastern Kentucky University, helping the Colonels to win three conference titles in the four years that she was with the team.
“It was cool to be able to travel and meet all kinds of people,” Sharpe-Mitchell said of her competitive playing days. “Golf has taken me to a lot of places that I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t played.”
After graduating from EKU in 2016, Sharpe-Mitchell began working in emergency medicine. She worked her way through nursing school and is now a mother to a three-year-old son, Lake. “If he wants to pick up golf one day, I’d be more than happy to teach him,” she said of her son.
As for whether she still plays, Sharpe-Mitchell said that she hasn’t picked up the clubs in a while, but she “still gets the itch from time-to-time.”
Looking back, Sharpe-Mitchell considers the 2015 state amateur championship victory to be the peak of her game. “I feel like I had put in a lot of time and work, and I went in knowing that I had done everything that I could to prepare,” she said of the tournament that would become her crowning achievement in the sport. “I didn’t feel like I was going to go home empty handed.”
“Golf is a mental game more than anything,” Sharpe-Mitchell continued. “So being able to win that tournament while playing against the best girls in Kentucky was pretty awesome. There are a lot of really good golfers’ names on that trophy. It is an honor for mine to be included.”
When asked what she might say to younger players aspiring to reach her level of achievement in their own careers, Sharpe-Mitchell said, “Golf is a lifelong sport, and it teaches you a lot of life lessons along the way. You have to start somewhere, but you can be as good as you want to be as long as you put in the time and the work.”
Sharpe-Mitchell warned that golf can be a pretty frustrating endeavor, but she also stressed the importance of not giving up, saying, “One bad hole doesn’t make for a bad round, just like one bad day doesn’t make a bad life. It will require patience, but you have to keep at it in order to get better if that’s really what you want to do.”
