Geyer death hits state and Cape Region golf community
February 20, 2009
A few of us were just beginning to warm up at the Shawnee Country Club practice range on Sunday morning February 15, when Tom Wright came walking up slowly toward our group.
He was clearly in a state of shock. We soon found out why.
Andrew Geyer, a recent club champion at Shawnee and 2004 state champion for Milford High’s Buccaneers, had died that morning.
Geyer, 22, a standout player for the Wesley College golf team in Dover, had been visiting friends in Morgantown, West Virginia. According to Mark Johnson, a good friend of Geyer’s and a former captain of the Cape Henlopen High School golf team, Geyer went to see a West Virginia University basketball game that Friday night, and was staying in Morgantown through the weekend.
According to police reports, an alleged drunk driver hit and killed Geyer early Sunday morning as he walked along a road. The driver is now facing serious criminal charges.
Geyer was a model student-athlete while at Wesley. According to the college, he carried a 3.93 grade point average. In 2008 he finished in fifth place in the Capital Athletic Conference Championships, and was named to the conference’s First Team. Geyer also earned his way onto the Conference All-Academic team.
In addition, Geyer was awarded a spot on the 2008 ESPA the Magazine/CoSIDA Academic All-District team. Last spring, he was part of the Wolverine squad that finished in seventh place at the NCAA Division III Championships.
Johnson said Geyer was planning to enroll in law school after graduation this spring. “He called me after he got back his LSATs. He was hoping that his grades would help him get in, also,” Johnson said.
The Wolverine golf team is going to try to honor his memory in a special way as they begin their spring season. As reported by an upstate newspaper, their coach is going to seek to have four players compete in the upcoming Pine Needles Invitational in Greensboro, North Carolina, but leave the No. 1 entry blank, where Geyer would have been slotted.
Johnson said he and Geyer had just signed up to play in the upcoming Tuesday night golf league at Shawnee. “It’s going to be rough,” he said of the loss of his friend.
“If Andrew was well-known, he was well-liked,” Johnson said. “I first met him when I was a senior at Cape, and then we met again when we were both at [the University of] Delaware. He was about the cockiest kid I’d ever met, but no one seemed to mind,” he said.
“To meet him was to hate him, but to know him was to love him,” Johnson added. As for his passing, Johnson said, “You have to try to make sense of it the best way you can. You have to hope there was some purpose to it.”
Devon Peterson, the golf professional at Shawnee, said he first met Geyer when the boy was only 15, during Peterson’s first year at the club. “It’s extremely unfortunate, and we’re all saddened by it. We were fairly friendly, and he was a good golfer. When he wanted to play he was very good. He was fun to be around,” Peterson said.
Geyer and I didn’t usually play in the same groups at Shawnee, but occasionally we’d be together for a league night or similar circumstance. He could certainly boom his drives, but he was more vulnerable on the greens than he liked. Geyer respected the game, however, as well as the golfers with whom he was paired.
Friends may call from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. on Friday, February 20 at the Avenue United Methodist Church, 20 N. Church Street, Milford. Services will be held at the church at 11:00 a.m., with burial at the Milford Community Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial contributions to the Andrew Joseph Geyer Golf Scholarship Fund, c/o Wesley College, 120 North Street, Dover DE 19901.