NORFOLK, VA (WTKR)- At four years old, Leah Onosato found herself going on trips to the driving range with her dad in her native Japan.
"He said I was a natural at the beginning," she remembered. "He was like, 'you hit the first shot and old men around were congratulating your swing.' I don't remember that at all, but then I eventually just kind of got into it."
Her love for golf took off. Leah would travel the world and meet a lot of people through the game, but after high school, she faced a choice.
"Usually after high school there isn't college golf," she said of the process in Japan. "Either you're going pro right away or you kind of give up the game and I don't think I was ready for either of those things."
That's when she began to explore going to college in the United States. Things progressed when a mutual acquaintance connected Leah with Old Dominion head coach Mallory Kane.
"One of my agents knew Mallory personally and introduced me to her," the Monarch fifth-year recalled. "The biggest reason why I chose Old Dominion was for coach."
"I remember the video chat very vividly," Kane said of their first meeting. "She was just so smart and just really on top of it, very mature, and we just had this connection that just kind of felt like it was meant to be."
Leah arrived on campus in the spring of 2019 and got to work, both on the course and in the classroom. Fast forward and she has a bachelors degree in English while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average. She's continued to hold that mark through her current masters work in applied linguistics.
"I'm specifically a TESON concentration, so that's like teaching English to speakers of other languages," she noted. "I pretty much just really love languages. I love the way languages work, I love studying how they work."
She's also grown into an even better golfer. Earlier this week, Leah led wire-to-wire at the Sun Belt Tournament and earned the individual conference title, finishing two strokes ahead of her nearest competitor. It marked the first time a Monarch women's golfer has ever claimed a conference crown.
"I've had so many people congratulate me," smiled Leah. "My phone has been blowing up since it finished, but it feels kind of unreal in a lot of ways."
"You lose way more than you win, so for someone who's truly deserving to come out and earn it and get it really means a lot to me as a coach and even more to her as the player," Kane added.
So what does the future hold? Leah says that she's considering to weigh all of her options, but no matter where the road takes her, golf will always be a part of her life.
"I will either continue to play competitively as an amateur here in Virginia or around America," she said. "A lot of people want me to try to go pro. I haven't decided... especially my dad. My dad wants me to try."
"She's always been near the top, but not on top for a variety of different reasons," Kane noted. "She's incredibly resilient and this is just, gosh, it's so fitting, but it's just special because it usually doesn't happen this way."
Leah's college career is not quite finished. She'll compete in the NCAA Regional Tournament from May 8-10 at a site to be announced.
