HASELDEN COLUMN: West's Behr has a lot going for him

If Hollywood really wanted to do a movie about living the American high school dream, a true story based on Stephen Behr’s life would be a great place to start.

Sure, some director would have to spice it up a bit. The young Behr is about as low-key as they come, especially for a guy who makes what he does look so easy.

But Behr is Jimmy Chitwood, Ferris Bueller and Lewis Skolnick all rolled up into one – the athlete, Mr. Popular and the brain.

OK, so maybe Behr doesn’t wear a pocket protector and those nerdy glasses like Skolnick, played by Robert Carradine in the 1984 social satire comedy “Revenge of the Nerds,” but the A-student will graduate somewhere in the upper reaches of his class in a few weeks at West Florence High School.

And Behr probably would never try to pull off some elaborate, fake-sick day of hooky like Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick, did in the 1986 classic, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” But gosh, people sure do love the kid.

Chitwood, played by Maris Valainis, was the quiet basketball star who made the game-winning shot to deliver that improbable state championship for tiny Hickory High in “Hoosiers.” He had nerves of steel and would just as soon send an opponent home whimpering as look at them.

Behr, the defending Class 4A golf individual state champion, has that part down pretty well.

Oh, he played tennis this year, too, going 6-1 at No. 2 singles for the Knights, losing only when West bowed out of the 4A playoffs against Aiken last week.

But make no mistake. Behr might have played No. 2, but he has No.1 stuff. West Florence tennis coach Charlie Nelson is convinced that if Behr had chosen to stick with tennis when he played No. 5 for the Knights as a seventh-grader, he’d be going off to college in a few months with rackets instead of the golf clubs he’s taking to Clemson.

“For an individual of his caliber – high academics, playing both sports in the same season, making all-region on both teams – he’s the total package,” Nelson says. “It’s so rare to have a person with that much talent.”

Nelson says Behr has a top-notch work ethic. But that talent sure does help. If Behr wasn’t endowed with a healthy dose of it, just playing “a couple of days to kind of get the rust off” before jumping back in wouldn’t have done the trick.

Why do it after all those years? Playing tennis gave Behr something to take his mind off golf and keep him from getting burned out. He also wanted to enjoy one last go-round with some good friends on the tennis team. And tennis, he said, helped his golf, too.

“It keeps me in shape, and while golf is kind of low-key, in tennis, you fight for every point. I feel like it gives me more of that fiery competitiveness,” he said.

That’s all Behr’s opponents need to hear, that he’s found another edge to make his golf game better.

But Behr is smart enough to know that he needs that edge. In his natural state, he’s not a rah-rah guy that gets himself pumped up by chest-bumping his teammates.

He might have the résumé of a rock star – if he chose to be that guy on the West Florence campus – but that’s just not his personality.

He’s quite the opposite, in fact. If you didn’t know anything about his load of accomplishments, you’d never find out in casual conversation with him. He’d rather talk about his team’s somewhat surprising second-place finish in the lower state tournament on Monday, when he shot 73 at Coosaw Creek Country Club.

“I didn’t play my best,” he said. “I think second is a huge achievement for us. It’s a lot more fun when the whole team does well.”

Behr is hoping Monday translates into something special for the Knights next week at Furman in the state championship match, where he’ll try to repeat as individual champion.

“Going back to back, you don’t have many chances to do that,” he said.

Then it’s a summer full of amateur events, some junior and some not, as he gets ready for Clemson. He’s ranked 12^th nationally among junior players who will graduate this year, and will go into many of those events as the favorite, which is just fine with him.

He plans to play in the Palmetto Amateur and the South Carolina Amateur, among others, and wants to wrap up his junior career by playing in the Cannon Cup, which pits top players from the East against those from the West.

And somewhere along the way, sometime before he heads up to Pickens County, Behr wants to just chill out, just a little.

“I’m looking forward to having fun and just getting to relax over the summer,” he said.

Yep, those rock stars, even those who don’t really live that life, need some rest sometime.

There won’t be much time for that in college, where there’s another stage waiting to be performed upon in front of another audience waiting to be wowed.

E-mail Mark Haselden at mhaselden@florencenews.com