Olivia Loberg never had a formal golf lesson. Her swing was developed through sibling rivalry. Her game was honed by a longing to be invited for a round by her father.

Loberg still imagines competing against her older brother Jack, a victory affirming her constant desire to be the better golfer. The Summit High junior is still driven by her childhood, when her father would take his son to the local course in Michigan, where the family lived at the time, while leaving Olivia at home.

Hoping to one day be invited to join her dad and her brother, she practiced around the house, putting toward different pieces of furniture. She constantly challenged her brother to short-game contests, in which the two would direct wedge shots at various “holes,” such as trees. When the family joined a golf club, Olivia and Jack took their matches to the links, where they tested each other’s skills.

“My brother and I were really competitive,” recalls Olivia, whose family moved to Oregon in 2012. “I always wanted to beat him. I practiced so hard as a little kid just so I could beat my brother. That’s why I’m where I am today, because I’m so competitive with him.”

Before graduating from Summit in 2016, Jack Loberg was a three-time top-10 placer at the Class 5A boys golf state championships, helping the Storm win back-to-back team titles in 2015 and 2016. Ever fueled by the desire to one-up her older brother, Olivia set out to be better. So far, she is on track.

After placing fourth at state as a freshman, as part of Summit’s state championship team in 2016, Olivia Loberg last season won the district title and tied for the 5A individual state championship. Rain cut the tournament short by nine holes. Perhaps the then-sophomore could have claimed the outright title over the scheduled 36 holes.

Instead, she had to settle for a tie. Yet she became just the second individual champion in program history and only the fourth girls player from Central Oregon to finish atop the leaderboard.

“She is a player because of Jack,” says Olivia’s father, Erik, who admits to being as competitive as his children. “That was the front-yard battle. Whether it was touch football or basketball in the driveway or over on the golf course. That definitely fuels her desire to be good.”

Olivia is quiet and at times introverted. A two-time all-Intermountain Conference selection in girls basketball (though she missed much of this past season due to a concussion), she is a sharpshooting guard for the Storm. But golf is her true love. It is her focus from the spring high school season to summer tournaments with the Oregon Golf Association and the American Junior Golf Association to a few fall rounds before she begins reconditioning for basketball in the winter.

She says she can become a vocal leader on the basketball court when necessary, but in golf, her preferred disposition surfaces: quiet, focused, driven.

“I feel like I do a lot better as an individual because I don’t have to rely on teammates and I can do my own thing,” says Loberg, who concedes that she would probably be an even better golfer if she focused solely on that sport.

Still, even first-year Summit coach Valerie Mallory, a 1994 Mountain View graduate who played at Weber State and Portland State, has noticed several things in Loberg that make the junior stand out.

“One is her ability to persevere and grind it out to get the good shot or good score,” Mallory says. “Another is she doesn’t get down on herself and she doesn’t get too excited about anything. So she plays really steady. In fact, you can hardly ever tell if she’s playing well or not. I also really appreciate her humble attitude and her quiet leadership skills.”

Other than coaching from her father, and a few swing tweaks from local teaching pros, Loberg’s game is self-taught. She comes from a golfing family (Jack just missed the cut for becoming an Oregon State walk-on; Erik is nearly a scratch golfer who played one year in junior college and now plays recreationally) and benefits from the Lobergs being members at Tetherow, where as an eighth-grader she set the competitive course record with a 6-under-par 66 at the Tetherow Club Championship. That record still stands. Olivia frequently watches golf on TV, soaking in the strategies and mechanics of the pros and adapting them to her own game.

As a result, she is among the favorites to contend for the 5A individual state championship this year. And she continues to dazzle during the regular season.

“She’s just a competitor and a natural athlete,” says eighth-year Bend High girls coach Lowell Norby. “She’s special.”

“The girl has been really good at basketball and golf and really anything she’s tried athletically over the years,” Erik Loberg says. “We’ve almost come to expect that she’s going to be able to do the things she’s doing. I just hold out hope that she’s wanting to continue to do this, because she’s got a special talent. She could be a really good player at the next level in college.”

A team captain for Summit this season, Loberg says she is being recruited by several major colleges, including Oregon State, Kansas, Wichita State and Mississippi State. And over this past weekend she visited Michigan State. While she is still a year and a half away from college, Loberg is determined to return to the top of the podium this spring. She will ride her bombing drives and pinpoint approach shots, perhaps an even more improved short game, to get there. She will remember those living-room putting contests and tree-to-tree competitions with her brother. She will feed off that competition to fulfill her daily goal of being the best in the field. And perhaps as a result, Olivia Loberg will join Bend High grad Taya Battistella (1997-98) and Summit grad Madison Odiorne (2012-15) to become the third Central Oregon girls golfer to win multiple high school state championships.

“From my childhood growing up, I always wanted to be the best,” she says. “Doing so with Jack and playing with him every day, I was really competitive.

“It really shows now.”

—Reporter: 541-383-0307, glucas@bendbulletin.com.