Tanner Owen normally doesn't check his phone when he's on the golf course.
The top golfer on the Nebraska men's team is generally focused on the task at hand, which has been a good enough strategy to land him at the top of the Huskers' lineup each of the past two seasons.
But March 12 was different. Owen's phone wouldn't stop buzzing. Finally, as he walked to the eighth tee box at Firethorn Country Club, he pulled it out of a pocket to see what the noise was all about.
Even if he already knew what might be coming.
"Hey man, I'm sorry to hear about your season. Keep your head up," read the first text.
A couple of taps later, Owen was on the NCAA website reading the announcement that confirmed all spring sports were canceled.
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"I don't really remember, like, an initial reaction. I was kind of ready, to a point, to be done. Not because I wanted to be; I just think it's important to kind of prepare yourself," Owen said this week. "Then it allowed me to get in the mindset of, get all this schoolwork done and let's get ready for the Big Ten championships, and maybe go out with a bang by going to regionals ... either way, just have your mind ready for it."
Talk to Owen for a few minutes, and it becomes clear he's the pragmatic type. Despite it being his senior season, and despite the unknowns ahead, he and fellow senior Mitch Klooz finished their front nine, went to the clubhouse, and tried to make sense of what would come next.
For Owen, "next" is an undergraduate degree in finance. He has two weeks left to finish things, and has been navigating the complexities of group projects with the extra layer of Zoom meetings thrown on top.
"But I've only got two weeks left, and I've put the last almost four years into it," Owen said. "So, no need to take the foot off the gas at this point."
The pedal will stay down for at least one more year, too. Owen will return to Nebraska next season to play the senior season that was taken away from him.
Owen, who has led NU in stroke average each of the past two seasons, had three potential job offers lined up this summer after earning his degree. He had traveled back and forth from Kansas City for interviews, and was in a good position to take the first step toward becoming a personal financial advisor.
But once NU golf coach Mark Hankins and Nebraska extended to Owen the opportunity to return, the decision became clear.
"In my mind I was telling myself, 'You have the rest of your life to work.' And one more year, especially with the amount of uncertainty in the world right now, it may not be the best time for me to enter the labor market anyway," Owen explained. "But it wasn't really a hard decision.
"I think that's the one thing that would bother, me, if I didn't exhaust my eligibility, just knowing that I had that one more year. Whether I want to pursue a professional career in golf or not, I came to play and exhaust my time. I just didn't feel right to end it all there, on nothing that I could control."
Owen's loyalty to NU is unquestioned. He's stayed in Lincoln, rather than return to his home in Parkville, Missouri, as he finishes up his schoolwork and tries to play golf when he can.
And while he could cruise through next year, Owen will instead get his MBA online. He'll also serve as Nebraska's Big Ten representative on the Student Athlete Advisory Committee.
"With this pandemic that's going on, the fifth-year seniors that are coming back, I think we can just provide a lot of insight; a lot of advice. We can give something to the voice of student-athletes, because no matter what, we're done after this year," Owen said. "There wasn't one simple reason, but I thought it was a little bit more involvement, I enjoyed SAAC, and I enjoyed that leadership position within the athletic department, and I just thought I would be a good fit."
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