TUSCALOOSA | Kathleen Ekey is intensity personified. From the second she enters a room, her confident strides eat up the floor between her and her destination. A firm handshake comes from a hand more familiar with a pitching wedge. Her eyes are piercing.

Her answer to the question of where she'll be in five years is bold.

'The LPGA Tour.'

Ekey, a junior majoring in communication studies, is in the midst of a very solid first year with the University of Alabama's women's golf team.

A transfer, Ekey followed the coach that recruited her out of high school, Mic Potter, to Furman, a perennial women's golf powerhouse. Ekey said Potter, the Crimson Tide's head coach, was a big part of the reason she decided to go to Furman in the first place.

'He was, I'd say, about 99 percent of the reason,' she said. 'But I had to honor my commitment,' because breaking her promise was not an option.

Potter said he never got the chance to coach Ekey at Furman, but was pleased when she decided to transfer.

'You commit to a school, not a coach,' he said. 'I think her decision was as much social as anything.'

He said the transition from Furman, a private liberal arts school of 2,500 students in Greenville S.C., to the Capstone, which is scheduled to hit 28,000 students by 2010, was relatively easy for Ekey.

'The worst part was that she's a bit further from home,' he said.

Ekey, originally from Akron, Ohio, said being far away from home is the only drawback because she is so close with her family.

'In high school I had to do a speech on the most influential person in my life, and I chose my brother,' she said.

Her brother, Byron, is a senior in high school in Ohio and a talented hockey player.

'I absolutely love watching my brother play,' she said. 'I never missed a game before I went to college, and I make every one of his games when I go home.'

Still hungry She said when she was younger, she wanted to join her brother on the ice. Her father, fearing she'd get hurt, presented her with an ultimatum.

'He said I could play hockey, but I had to give up another sport,' she said. 'He knew I wouldn't do that.'

Golf has always been Ekey's main sport. When she was a toddler the only thing that could maintain her undivided attention for longer than five minutes was television coverage of golf tournaments.

'Watching all that golf probably really helped me when I started playing,' she said.

She got her first set of plastic clubs when she was 3 and upgraded to metal when she was 5.

'I couldn't get enough of it,' she said.

She still can't.

'She comes [to the course] straight from class and is always the last person to leave,' Potter said.

Ekey said her dedication has become something of a running joke amongst her teammates.

'I get made fun of because I practice an inordinate amount of time,' she said. 'That's why they call me 'Air Mattress.'

All that practice is paying off. Alabama's women's golf team won their first tournament of the spring -- the Puerto Rico Classic -- over LSU and Kent State. Ekey contributed three rounds of solid golf to tie for seventh place. She is ranked 27 in the nation and the team's highest ranked player in the Golfweek rankings.

For all of her accomplishments, Potter said Ekey is still hungry.

'All of those things are nice, but at the end of the day she wants to win tournaments,' he said. 'And I think she's going to do that.'