By Tara Murray
Don Deeble winner Jesse Trembath is set for plenty of time on the golfing greens before he heads to college later this year.
Trembath on Wednesday night was named the 2024 Don Deeble winner, beating out nine other young sporting stars.
He received $5000 as the winner, with joint runner-ups AFLW draftee Sierra Grieves and runner Lucy Cleveland receiving $2500 each.
Speaking after he was crowned the winner, Trembath said it was pretty incredible.
“I’m just super grateful,” he said. “I didn’t know what to really expect.
“I had my hopes up and it was a good night and it couldn’t have ended even better. The money will be really helpful, golf is a pretty expensive sport.
“There’s so much travel and that will go straight to that.”
Trembath was the March nominee for the Deeble award.
The Point Cook resident was a talented cricketer and footballer before deciding to focus on golf when he was just four.
“Dad likes to take credit for it,” he said. “I think it was more my grandmother, she loved to take me and my brother out when were younger and it went from there.,
“I just loved it, and that was really it. It’s really fun, you have the love for it and you really enjoy it, it doesn’t feel like hard work every day.”
Playing on local courses at Kooringal and Sanctuary Lakes, Trembath continued his improvement and was soon identified by Golf Victoria.
He holds the current course record at Kooringal Golf Club shooting a 63 in April last year, while he was a 2023 state team member, Golf Victoria high performance team and a Callaway “Next Program” representative.
He has won the Victorian Junior Amateur and Victorian Junior Masters in 2023 and in 2024 he was one of only two juniors to qualify for the Victorian Open.
After finishing year 12, Trembath has committed to Iowa State University and will head to America in August.
He said it was an easy decision to go to college instead of going professional.
“No one really went to college 10-15 years ago, all the golfers stayed in Australia,” he said. “Over the last five years everyone has gone and there’s so much more opportunity over there.
“All the best players are over there, all the money is over there. Once I saw some people were going over there, I wanted to do.”
Trembath said his dad, Craig Trembath, was probably his biggest role model. Craig won Commonwealth Games gold in shooting.
Jesse said there two sports have a lot of similarities.
“Him being a shooter he was in a very static sport as well, like gold, an individual sport,” he said. “There’s so much that I’ve learned from him as much as I don’t want to listen to him too much, I’m getting better at taking his advice.”
Trembath said that he would spend the next few months getting his game ready for college.
He is currently working on changing his swing after identifying things he wasn’t happy with.
“I didn’t want to get there and have to be figuring things out with my swing,” he said. “It’s the priority the next few months before I leave so when I’m there, I’m ready to go.”
The Don Deeble Sports Star Award is sponsored by the Yarraville Club Cricket Club, Strathmore Community Bank, the Deer Park Club, Ascot Vale Sports and Trophies and Star Weekly Newspapers.
If you would like to nominate a monthly winner, emailing swrsportsclub@gmail.com or 0408 556 631.
