Mike Hogan \u201972 and his wife, Sondra, have pledged an estate gift of $500,000 to the Furman men\u2019s golf scholarship endowment, bringing the program closer to being fully funded.<\/p>\n
Hogan, who played from the 1969 to 1972 seasons, was part of a group of former Paladins that rallied together to endow scholarships for the team in 2014. Since then, they have raised more than $2.7 million in commitments for the endowment, which at current market value funds approximately 1.7 scholarships.<\/p>\n
When realized, the Hogans’ gift will significantly reduce the $2.7 million left to raise for the program\u2019s scholarships to be fully funded at the NCAA maximum of 4.5.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to see where the ceiling is for our program, and we\u2019ll see what that ceiling is when we\u2019re fully funded scholarship wise,\u201d Furman Coach Matt Davidson \u201904 said. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to provide our student-athletes with as many opportunities, as many resources, as much aid, as we can. It was incredibly generous of the Hogans to provide this gift and provide us the opportunities to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hogan, a native of Old Fort, North Carolina, retired from a career in the insurance business in 2013 and has worked in real estate development for the last 10 years. He currently lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with Sondra, to whom he has been married for 27 years.<\/p>\n
In addition to competing on the golf team, Hogan majored in economics and was a member of the Furman Singers for four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy four years at Furman helped me and many others prepare for life after college. Being on the golf team was especially impactful since we had classes every morning and practiced every afternoon, not to mention all the intense competition,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cI believe that same environment exists at Furman today giving students all the advantages of a great education combined with dedicated faculty and staff who genuinely care about their success after college. Sondra and I are very excited that our gift will help young golfers have the same opportunity I had at Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furman also recently began construction on the 100% donor-funded Davis & Faxon Training Facility at REK, named in honor of former Paladin golf greats Cindy Davis \u201984 and Brad Faxon \u201983, who provided the lead gifts on the capital campaign. The facility will boast six hitting stations in three covered bays, an indoor putting studio, a club repair shop and a workout area.<\/p>\n
Davidson, the 2002 Southern Conference Player of the Year, is in his third season as coach. He led the Paladins to a pair of top-three finishes last season, which was shortened because of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur coaches and student-athletes are appreciative,\u201d he said of Hogan\u2019s gift. \u201cGifts like that can certainly spur on other people as well. We have a lot of momentum building. The last six years we\u2019ve done really well to get where we are, which is financially stable and to have a fantastic starting point for the endowment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mike Hogan \u201972 and his wife, Sondra, have pledged an estate gift of $500,000 to the Furman men\u2019s golf scholarship endowment, bringing the program closer to being fully funded. Hogan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":9056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,24,57,46,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni","category-athletics","category-donor-stories","category-economics","category-top-four-news-1st-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}