Jovaun Salcido finds hope, overcomes adversity with Evans Scholars Foundation

Some would say the odds were stacked against Jovaun Salcido.

He is the child of a single mother who saw her physically abused by two boyfriends. His father has never been present in his life. At times, Salcido and his sister had to go live with their late grandmother, as well as people from their church or families of childhood friends. His mom eventually turned to alcohol and is still not “fully ready to take on the role as a mother again,” the 19-year-old says.

Suggest that he must have had to grow up awfully quickly, though, and Salcido’s response is matter of fact.

“It was just the cards that I was dealt,” he says simply. “Growing up, I never really looked at it that way. I kind of just saw it as living life, and honestly, now that I look back, I'm happy with the way that my life was lived because I feel like I’m a lot more ahead of than other kids, just getting a full grasp on life.”

With money tight, Salcido started working as a caddie, first at Meridian Golf Club in Englewood, Colorado, and later at nearby Castle Pines Golf Club, which this week hosts the BMW Championship. The extra cash he earned for clothes and school supplies was much needed, but Salcido had his eyes on something much bigger.

One of the women his mother worked with had told her about the Evans Scholarship. The renewable grant, which is awarded by the Western Golf Association’s Evans Scholars Foundation, covers tuition and housing for high-achieving young caddies from low-income backgrounds.

All proceeds from this week’s BMW Championship, the second event in the FedExCup Playoffs, benefit the Evans Scholars Foundation. The first scholarships were awarded in 1930 and a total of 12,040 have graduated since the program’s inception.

Salcido, who will be caddying in the Wednesday pro-am at the BMW Championship, is one of 1,130 Evans Scholars currently enrolled at 24 campuses around the country. He is the first person in his family to go to college and starts his sophomore year at the University of Colorado Boulder next week.

For Salcido, the opportunity to go to college is transformational, and he hopes it will have an impact on future generations of his family.

“My family's just always been a family that's struggled,” Salcido says. “… I don't know, growing up, I just always had this idea that I wanted to be great. I didn't know how that was going to happen, but I knew it was going to happen.

“And then I was given the Evans Scholarship, and that just changed everything for me.”

Salcido describes his childhood as being dark at times. The cycle of abuse his mother Alia endured was “horrific,” he says. He calls his grandmother, Darlene, the “light of my life at the beginning of my childhood.” She led him to become a Christian, which proved pivotal in his life. “I really thanked her for that, bringing me to God, because I think I was able to endure a lot more knowing that her and God are on my side,” Salcido says.

But Salcido’s grandmother died after an operation to remove a tumor, which is when his mother decided to leave her abusive boyfriend and move the family to a small apartment in Highlands Ranch, a Denver suburb. That’s when Salcido began caddying in the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy Program at Meridian Golf Club, mentored by Paul Lobato and several other men at the club. He was also able to earn an academic scholarship to Valor Christian, one of the top college preparatory schools in Colorado. He thrived there, playing linebacker on the football team while caddying in his spare time.

After his sophomore year, though, Salcido and his sister Geneva, who has special needs, were removed from the household. He remembers his mother going to the liquor store every day where she would “grab a couple of shooters … but then sometimes she would take it a little too far.” Geneva now lives with some people from their church while Salcido spends his summers with the family of his childhood best friend.

“I feel like every family has their own struggles, for sure,” Salcido says. “I guess in Highlands Ranch, I did feel a little insecure about my family. Just the fact that I couldn't wear a different tee shirt every day of the week, or it was just little things that I was insecure about and thought a lot about when I was younger.

“But after parting ways with my mom and not living with her, I was just fully able to accept that the fact that my family didn't have money wasn't in my control. … I definitely had this insecurity that I didn't want people to know that my family was low-income in Highlands Ranch. I honestly think I did a really good job of hiding it.”

Salcido is quick to talk about the many mentors who have guided him. Golfers at Meridian and Castle Pines have taken him under their wing. A Big Brother he first met in eighth grade with whom he’s still in contact. A history teacher who introduced him to the hit Broadway show, “Hamilton,” which really resonated with Salcido.

“He kind of has a fun similar story where he grew up poor with a single mom, and he had to essentially rise up and become one of the founding fathers of America,” Salcido says. “So that was also a huge part of my life when I was younger. Just listening to that soundtrack myself.”

Salcido never doubted he would go to college, even without the Evans Scholarship. He was that committed to higher education. But it would have been a challenge and the prospect of going into debt with student loans “definitely would’ve been scaring me quite a bit,” Salcido says. Now he can concentrate on earning his degree in business.

“I just knew (college) was the central tenet of being a strong human in society, and that determines the low income and the high income,” Salcido says. “It's education, you know what I mean? … Also, college is a great place to network and meet a bunch of good people.”

Just like he did on the golf course.