Chatting with kids after they participate in a Golf in Schools field trip can reinstill faith that golf will be just fine decades in the future when they’re at the helm of society.
Asked what they thought of the game — and the day — after Thursday’s field trip at CommonGround Golf Course in Aurora, here is a sampling of responses from third-graders at Side Creek Elementary School:
“It was really fun,” Mariama Keita said. “Golf is an interesting sport. You get to see how far you can hit the ball and how slow you could do it.”
“It was the best,” Keoni Johnson said, adding that his only previous experience with the game was when “I went to this mini-golf place and (after that) I always wanted to go golfing.” Asked what he learned from Golf in Schools and the field trip, Johnson responded, “How to hold the golfing stick properly and how to hit the ball properly because if you hit it wrong, it’s going to hit somebody in the head. And watch out for the head part because if it hits somebody’s head, you have to call 9-1-1.”
And from Eric Le: “It was pretty fun. I got to hit balls and I hit one to the first pole (on the driving range). I hit the ground so hard I made a hole.”
Only time will tell how many of the 96 third-graders from Side Creek will play golf years down the road, but it’s safe to say that Golf in Schools makes it considerably more likely. At no cost to either students or schools, the program exposes kids to golf through their physical education classes at school, with the experience often culminating with a field trip to the golf course like the one Side Creek students had on Thursday at CommonGround, the course the CGA owns and operates. Two more field trips are planned later this month at CommonGround.
Golf in Schools programs in Colorado date back quite a few years. And since 2011, they’ve fallen under one large umbrella, thanks to the CGA, Colorado PGA, CWGA and the other Allied Golf Associations of Colorado joining forces. According to the Colorado PGA, Golf in Schools has reached roughly 50,000 kids since the joint program was announced in 2011. In the CGA’s case, though Golf in Schools focuses primarily on fourth- and fifth-graders, there is a GIS program at Rock Canyon High School.
“This is just a way to get golf in front of them because P.E. classes don’t have the means to teach golf — or have the equipment, but we do have the equipment and instructors to do it,” said Erin Gangloff, the CGA’s managing director of programs, who, as usual, was running things for the field trip at CommonGround. “Our goal is to put a golf club in their hands and let them know about the sport — and hopefully have a lifelong golfer in the end.”
In the case of this week’s field trip, two busloads of third-graders from the public Aurora elementary school came to CommonGround, and for about three hours, they learned a lot about golf and had plenty of fun and games in the process. They rotatated among stations at CommonGround’s Kids Course, hitting balls at the back of the practice range, chipping, putting, playing on the course and learning a little about the Rules. There was even some up-close exposure to golf course machinery — specifically mowers — and (new this year) a little agronomy lesson, complete with different samples of turf. And, of course, the field trip was capped off by an outdoor lunch at the course.
All this after early in the school year getting three separate P.E. classes on the full swing, chipping and putting.
“Coming here is just phenomenal,” said LeAnn Zimmerman, a Side Creek P.E. teacher who has brought three or four classes to CommonGround over the years as part of Golf in Schools. “The kids get so excited. This is an opportunity that they’ll never have again. They allow the students to explore the entire (Kids) Course, where they understand it and they feel comfortable to come out on their own. They also allow the students to come all summer for free (to play on the Kids Course). Hopefully they take advantage of that. It’s just amazing their staff while we’re here is so welcoming and warm.”
On Thursday, staffers from the CGA and one from the USGA, along with many volunteers, kept things fun and informative for the 96 kids. Needless to say, given that most of the third-graders hadn’t been on a golf course before, safety was a high priority for organizers. In fact, one of the first orders of business was a little something staffers learned from PGA instructor Gary Davis at a Golf in Schools session years ago.
“Our favorite part is Hector the honeydew (melon),” Gangloff said. “We do that every field trip. We go over safety and we talk about holding the club heads up, grips down; don’t be swinging around; pay attention. We call our honeydew Hector or Henry and we say, ‘He wasn’t paying attention and this is what happened'” as a field trip leader takes an iron to the unsuspecting melon, breaking it into pieces. “It just gets the kids so excited. They love it. That’s a big highlight for us — to see their faces when we do that.”
By her own estimate, Gangloff has been on hand for about a dozen of these field trips over the years. Not surprisingly, she remembers a couple of incidents that raised her blood pressure a little. Last year, she noted, CGA director of development Ryan Smith got a golf ball to the top of his head after a student had given it a toss. “I told the kids today about it and said, ‘He’s not here today because he’s afraid of you,'” Gangloff said with a smile. “Really, he has a meeting, but …”
Then there was the time some kids were retrieving balls they had hit at the back end of the practice range when they wandered a little further out than they should have. Fortunately, “most of the players on the (front end of the) range had stopped hitting,” Gangloff remembers with relief.
Speaking of Gangloff, by all accounts she’s a major part of making the field trips a success.
“Erin is a rock star,” Zimmerman said. “All props to her.”
Zimmerman noted that the Golf in Schools field trip has become quite the popular event at Side Creek Elementary. Of course, most field trips are popular for schoolkids, but this one has a unique quality.
“Brothers and sisters have told these kids exactly what to expect — and these are kids from years ago,” Zimmerman said. “It stuck in their mind obviously now that they’re in middle school or high school and they’re amped to tell their siblings all about it, so they’re all excited to come. I think it is memorable for sure. My fifth-graders did not earn the field trip, and they were bummed about it because they had been here before as third-graders.”
And what feedback has Gangloff gotten from parents and kids over the years after hosting field trips at CommonGround?
“We’ve had kids that have been like, ‘I really like this sport. This might be my new favorite sport,'” she said. “I was talking to a dad today who said, ‘My son plays baseball and I didn’t know what kind of contact he’d make with a golf ball. But he got into it, and now we’re going to start looking at golf too.’ We have a lot of kids who say, ‘This is so much fun.’ If they make contact the first time, that’s what you see. They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can actually play this game.'”
