MY LETU STORY: Kaiden Schneider

NOTE: This is part of a series on letuathletics.com with feature stories written by senior student-athletes about their time at LeTourneau and the impact it has made on them.

By: Kaiden Schneider | Sr. | Men's Golf

I can’t imagine my life if I wouldn’t have come to LeTourneau. 

The person I have become because of this university has benefited me in all aspects of my life. From coming in my freshman year scared and not knowing what to expect, to finishing off my senior year grateful for the past four years. 

My story at LeTourneau has truly transformed my faith, instilled confidence in myself as both a leader and individual and strengthened my trust in God’s plan for my future. 

I remember deciding that LeTourneau was the best place for me my senior year of high school. My decision was based solely off my golf aspirations. I realized after my first semester of my freshman year that this school was more than just the next step in my golf career. I began to understand the importance of my identity and what I placed it in. Even with the success that my freshman year came with, I recognized that there was more to my purpose at LeTourneau than just golf. 

Following my freshman year, I began to find more friends and be surrounded by more people who pushed me even more within golf and shaped the leader and individual I am today. I truly loved what LeTourneau was turning out to be and how excited and joyful I felt about the golf team and the people I had met within the business department and other areas of the school. 

I began to feel a drive to learn the specifics of my accounting degree. The business professors and department helped me feel eager to learn and develop the skills needed within an accounting degree. Even with the success that my sophomore year came with, I still felt that there was more to my identity at LeTourneau than great golf and great friends. 

My junior year consisted of the most challenges, but it ultimately became the period where I experienced the most growth. 

I had come off my second knee surgery, and I wasn’t able to play the fall golf season. I wanted to put in more work to prove to myself and to the rest of the team that I would come back in the spring as good, or better, than I was before the injury. Along with that, the classes I was taking started to increase in difficulty and it didn’t help that I had a striving for perfection attitude. During the challenges that began in the fall, I met new friends that led me to find a church in Longview and that’s when my faith truly started to transform. 

I finally recognized that my purpose and my identity needed to be in God instead of my success in school and golf. To my surprise, that spring semester came with as much or more success than the past years.

Now, I’m a senior with leadership and practical skills from the past years, a new identity shaped in God, and more confidence in myself, my friends and my role at LeTourneau. As a captain of the golf team my sophomore year through my senior year, I felt I filled in the leadership role fully my senior year. As I was influenced positively by different friends my junior year, I made it an important goal my senior year to bring more positive, faith-based fellowship into our golf team which led to many of us all going to church. Being able to help the people around me and encourage them to enjoy their time at LeTourneau while also striving for success, motivates me and directly correlates with my goal as a leader. 

Looking back on my time at LeTourneau, I see how every challenge, success, and relationship played a role in shaping who I am today. What started as a decision based on golf turned into a journey of personal growth, deeper faith, and lifelong friendships. 

LeTourneau has prepared me not only for a career in accounting, but for life beyond college with a strong foundation of purpose and confidence. As I move forward into the next chapter, I do so with gratitude for the past four years and a trust that God will continue to guide my path just as He has throughout my time here.

Kaiden Schneider