Everyone knows of at least one viral video sensation on YouTube.
Whether it be Rebecca Black belting an autotuned song about Friday, a man begging people to leave Brittany Spears alone or a man getting too excited at the sight of a double rainbow that stretches all the way across the sky. These sensations have become pop culture phenomenons, with no rhyme or reason why.
But what some San Diego State students might not realize is that over the past year the SDSU women’s golf team has become a viral video sensation of its own.
In February of last year, the team heard about a nationwide contest which called for NCAA teams to create a one-minute video of their team pulling off creative trick shots.
The winner would receive a monetary grant for their program.
So, the Aztecs decided to give the competition a shot and spent some time after a Friday practice at The Farms Golf Club trying to come up with some creative moves.
“It took us about maybe two, three hours,” senior Emma Henrikson said. “Nothing was really planned, we just kind of did something that was fun at the time.”
However, the competition the Aztecs hoped to enter was called off.
“The competition ended up getting cancelled, but we decided to make the video at that point, so we just kept making it anyway,” junior Sirene Blair said.
The video was shot and edited by Kristina Lynn, who was the team’s manager at the time. Lynn added Mark Ronson’s hit song “Uptown Funk” to spice up the video, and decided to upload the video to YouTube for fun.
At first, the video was picked up by a few local news channels and papers, and retweeted by websites like BuzzFeed and Total Frat Move.
But eventually, the video caught the eye of a few major national news outlets, and began gaining huge popularity.
Websites like Bleacher Report, Golf Digest, USA Today, The Golf Channel, ESPN and even the Professional Golf Association (better known as the PGA) shared the link to the video on their websites.
Pretty soon the video that was made for fun saw its number of views climb rapidly, and today, the video has been viewed by well over 2 million people on YouTube.
“ I have no idea how that happened,” Henrikson said. “We were betting on the final number in the beginning. We were like, ‘OK, if it gets over a 100,000 it’s so good,’ and then it kept increasing.”
Being from Sweden, Henrikson has also heard people mention the video to her from overseas as well.
“All of the sudden I had friends back in Europe who were like, ‘Oh I saw you in this thing on the internet,’” Henrikson said.
Blair also mentioned how the team is recognized for the video when they travel as well.
“When we travel and we’re at airports, that’s when we get the most recognition I feel like,” Blair said. “We’re all a team and have all of our gear and stuff, and people kind of stare at us for a while and they’re like, ‘Hey, you’re from the internet YouTube thing.’”
In the 55-second video, the Aztecs pull off some Harlem Globetrotter-esque moves, which include juggling the ball with two clubs, volleying the ball between their clubs, clothes, and bodies, and ending with the team standing in a line and sinking their putts into one hole.
Before making the video, Blair claims the team did a little research and searched Instagram to spark some ideas.
“We kind of looked at some other people who had just done one trick for each little video clip, and we kind of compiled all of those clips that we saw together and attempted them on our own,” Blair said.
Blair and Henrikson said the team putt that concludes the video was their favorite, but also the hardest to pull off.
“That took us a long time to get that one done,” Blair said. “Probably like a solid hour or so.”
“All of us would make it and one person would miss, and I was that one person multiple times,” Henrikson said with a laugh.
As for a sequel, the idea is still up in the air.
“We’ve been thinking about it,” Henrikson said. “If we have time, I’d love to do it. Maybe, we’ll see.”
