Written by Dunc Mills, Executive Director, The McLennan Ross Junior Golf Tour

Tour Talk

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

When the McLennan Ross Junior Golf Tour, Presented by Crowe MacKay, was founded twenty years ago, one of the main goals of the Tour was to help grow the game of golf in Alberta by providing a platform for aspiring young Albertans to start to get their feet wet in the world of tournament golf. As the Tour enters its 21st season this year, I think it is fair to say that the Tour has more than accomplished that goal as tens of thousands of juniors have entered tournaments over the last two decades and many of them are now introducing their own children to our wonderful sport.

One of the most unique and heart- warming ‘grow the game’ initiatives in Alberta golf circles came to light last summer after receiving a phone call from Jim Fraser, the CPGA Head Golf Professional at Eagle Point GC in Wabasca. Eagle Point is a terrific new nine-hole course located about a two- hour drive north of Athabasca and serves the hamlet of Wabasca/Desmarais and the entire Municipal District of Opportunity, Alberta’s third-largest M.D.

Fraser has been the head pro at the tree-lined Puddicombe Golf designed layout since the course opened in August, 2013. Fraser said in his call that he had some very enthusiastic, but inexperienced young juniors. All were from the aboriginal community of Wabasca/Desmarais and had been learning golf over the past couple of summers. He felt they were now ready to expand their horizons by entering a junior golf tournament.

“It has been very interesting and very rewarding working with these boys and girls the past couple of years,” said the personable Fraser, who had previously been the head pro at the Smoky Lake GC for five years. “In 2013 when the course opened, we started out from ground zero. We had a brand new golf course and a fabulous clubhouse, but no members and no juniors.”

Fraser tirelessly went about the task of building a membership base, both by recruiting kids from the school system in the community and introducing adults to golf as well. The club offered very affordable family passes designed to get youth and adults alike interested in taking up golf.

“We have a small, but very dedicated core of volunteers here in the community who were already golfers, and they helped tremendously in both getting these youngsters involved and encouraging adults to learn the game as well,” Fraser said. “It was a steep learning curve for these kids, and for some of the adults,
too. We had to coach them in everything from basic swing mechanics to things like keeping up a proper pace of play, course etiquette and even learning to play from the appropriate tees!”

Once the juniors started to improve, Fraser thought it was time for them to spread their wings, and last August, he and some volunteers accompanied ten budding stars to the McLennan Ross Tour event at Blackhawk GC in Edmonton. Talk about jumping into the deep end of the pool to get your golf careers started!

The kids were nervous of course and needed some help at first with things like how to use a tournament scorecard, which other more experienced juniors perhaps take for granted. But they behaved beautifully, competed hard, and made many new friends among the other competitors. Fraser said the kids and the entire community couldn’t stop talking about the experience afterwards.

“The kids had a great time,” he continued. “It was a fantastic experience for them and a nice reward for all the hard work they have put in learning to play.” This summer, Fraser hopes that the Eagle Point juniors will be competing in several McLennan Ross events over the summer.

We have a full slate of 25 Tour events on the 2016 schedule leading up to the 21st annual Tour Championship at Wolf Creek Golf Resort on August 29, 2016. Our corporate partners in the Tour, led by the law firm of McLennan Ross, our Presenting Sponsor Crowe MacKay, and the rest of our roster of partners, have been critically important to the ongoing success of the Tour. Thanks must also go to the clubs that host Tour events as well as the parents and families who support their kids’ participation. See you on Tour this summer!

Tour Talk

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

After a 112 year hiatus, Golf is back in the Olympics. The men’s tournament has already wrapped, so Canadian’s turn their attention to the young phenom hoping to lead Canada to victory, Brooke Henderson.

This July, Henderson was announced as a member of the Canadian Olympic Golf team heading to the games in Rio. The conference was held in Ontario, while Henderson was live streamed via satellite from the Golf Canada Calgary Centre where she was hosting a junior girls golf clinic for other young golf hopefuls. We had the opportunity to attend this fantastic event, please enjoy our video recap.

This year, Edmonton’s CN Future Links Girl’s Club celebrated their 10^th anniversary. Girl’s Club is an initiative to encourage more girls to experience the benefits of golf in a comfortable environment.

The Edmonton Girl’s Club gets together regularly throughout the summer at various golf courses in the city. The girls that participate range from ages 7 to 18, with graduates of the program returning to mentor the girls.

The success of the program would not be possible without the hard work of the organizers and site leaders, who volunteer their time for this great cause. Special recognition goes to Deb Keller (CN Future Links Site Leader), Dawn Stengel (Organizer), Enid Botchett (Assistant Site Leader), Dory Reich (Treasurer), Linda Sharpe (Advisor) and Dani Perl (Recruiter) for starting the Edmonton Girl’s Club from the ground up and watching it grow.

Congratulations, girls!

Written by Kevin Smith, Global TV

Team AB TAPS into Talent

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

The last time I heard the word “TAPS”, I was a kid watching the 1981 movie of the same name starring Sean Penn and Tom Cruise. It was the movie debut for both actors and it certainly tapped into their potential that has since made both superstars. How does this relate to Alberta Golf 35 years later? Two coaches for Team Alberta have devised a new scorecard called “TAPS” to help Team Alberta junior golfers mature more quickly in both their golf games and in life.

Randy Robb, Alberta Golf’s manager of high performance sport, has been a Team Alberta coach for over a decade while Pinebrook Golf and Country Club junior coach, Luke Workman, joined Team Alberta last year. Robb and Workman have devised a program for their Alberta juniors unlike anything we’ve seen in Canada. “TAPS” or “Team Alberta Performance Scorecard” has 18 specific categories on a unique scorecard that helps each player assess areas of strength and weakness in his or her golf game.

The “TAPS” scorecard focuses on different aspects such as long game, short game, putting, tactical and technical skills, as well as physical and mental skills. If a category is an area of strength, the player earns a birdie or an eagle. If it’s an area of weakness, then the player chalks up a bogey. If it’s average, then the player gets a par.

Workman, Team Alberta junior girls coach, says he and Robb wanted to devise a more objective measuring tool for the juniors and their parents in the Team Alberta program. “It’s a feedback tool,” said Workman. “It helps us identify where players are excellent and areas where players need improvement to help them lower their scores. It will also help them become more well-rounded athletes and people for that matter.” The scorecard helps provide an individualized practice plan for each player and shows them how best to spend their time.

Robb points out that college golf programs often have as many players sitting on the sidelines each week as they do competing in tournaments. His objective is to help develop juniors that not only make college golf teams, but are leaders on them. “Our goal is to have them be successful at college, both in the classroom and on the golf course,” Robb said. “We’re trying to set it up so they have a better college experience.”

The eight girls and nine boys on Team Alberta will be the first golfers in the province using the “TAPS” system. Kehler Koss, 17, plays out of Earl Grey Golf Club in Calgary and is one of the eight junior girls on Team Alberta. Koss sees the benefit of this scorecard as a learning tool.

“I love it,” Koss raves.

“It sets goals for you and everyone wants to be under par on the scorecard. It really helps athletes who want to take this sport seriously and to know exactly where they need to improve. This really sets the benchmark for athletes in Alberta.”

Koss has already found out she gets lots of birdies in categories such as school work and fitness, but some bogeys in her short game. She is already working harder on her 60-70 yard wedges and lag putting. “It’s really an honour to be a part of that program and be supported by Randy and Luke,” she said. “They really have their hearts set on the juniors developing into the best they can be. The “TAPS” program is one of the main keys that they use.”

Randy Robb has used many coaching techniques in his years with Alberta Golf, but he’s very excited to see if the “TAPS” scorecard becomes one of the best.

“We are just starting to use the “TAPS” program with the players this year, but in the future we’d like to see more and more kids use this concept.”

Robb and Workman will assess the effectiveness of the “TAPS” program once the golf season has ended to see if it did indeed ‘tap’ into the talent of these junior golfers.

Team AB TAPS into Talent

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

Written by Jefferson Hagen

An Early Start

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

It’s a bit of a twist on the old playground mantra: ‘Everything I learned, I learned in phys-ed class.’

Thanks to a burgeoning Golf Canada program, administered by Alberta Golf, students are getting exposed to the game at a young age in their classes. Launched in the province in 2007, the Golf in Schools program has since grown to include more than 320 elementary schools, more than 10 junior high schools and more than 35 high schools.

Matt Rollins, former executive director/CEO of Alberta Golf, spearheaded the program in the province. “All these other sports that were in physical education classes had a huge advantage over us. Kids were learning those sports at a young age and the teachers controlled the environment. We figured ‘why can’t we do that with golf?’

“As we improve the Golf In Schools program every year, students are going to continue to get introduced to golf in a positive way.”

In the village of Amisk, AB, with a population just north of 200, a number of youngsters have already hit the links at the nearby Hughenden Golf Club. Principal Colette Johnson, who is also the phys-ed teacher, set up the Golf in Schools program three years ago and now puts about 55 kids from Grades 1-3 through golf instruction each year.

“We teach them how to hold the club and we show them the swing and the stance,” she said. “We give them the basic skills and let them have a little bit of fun.”

The pay off came when the Hughenden Golf Club sponsored their classes for a field trip to the course.

While it’s tough for kids in the farming community to get to the course regularly, Johnson notes some former students have continued playing golf.

“A few of them have said they’ve talked their parents into taking them golfing.” Johnson claimed.

Jeff Thompson, chief sport officer for Golf Canada, noted that approximately 325,000 students are being exposed to golf every year in roughly 2,700 schools across the country. While the exact number of kids who go on to play the game regularly is tough to quantify, there are encouraging metrics to study.

“When a school comes to visit a facility on a field trip program or when a facility sends a golf pro into a school, we have provided our Golf In Schools passes to give out to the kids. The passes are redeemable for free buckets of range balls,” Thompson added, referring to last year’s pilot project.

“Just over 10 per cent of those passes were redeemed, and in most cases, the students coming back to the club weren’t by themselves but came with their entire family. That was really encouraging information.”

There are also options for schools to take field trips to local golf courses to learn more about the game. Golf clubs can apply for a grant, which allows them to invite a school in their area out for a tour, which may include practice time on the range, chipping and putting lessons.

Arlene Buchan, learning leader at Dr. E.P. Scarlett high school in Calgary, notes they’ve long been taking their classes out to area courses under sponsorship from the Calgary Board of Education. Most recently their classes went to Blue Devil Golf Club.

“They loved it,” Buchan said. “Some of the students had previously played golf, but there are a lot of students who had never held a golf club in their hands. It’s awesome.” Many Dr. E.P. Scarlett students are continuing on with golf after taking the program in high school.

“We see that because that’s the whole premise of our phys-ed program now,” said Buchan. “The Golf in Schools program really sparks their interest. One of our focuses is to foster lifelong learning and being active for life. Golf is one of the perfect sports for that.”

At the high school level the Golf in Schools program is primarily about skill development. The elementary school curriculum introduces the game much more through fun activities.

“The elementary kit is about physical literacy, basic motor movements and games,” said Tyler McConachy, Alberta Golf’s manager of youth development.

The kit and curriculum includes all the equipment and a learning resource full of lesson plans to teach golf. “It’s a lot more unstructured, including exercises such as hopping on one leg or using the putter and a ball to wind their way through an obstacle course. It’s a lot more of a game.

“From there, the program transitions into the fundamentals of the sport, including more technical and structured play and practice,” McConachy added.

Golf Canada has added a new ‘Life Skills’ component to the program, in which students are taught skills such as perseverance, emotional regulation, teamwork, respect, honesty and goal setting. “We felt that the addition of life skills to the program was really important to demonstrate some of the core values of golf and what it delivers as a sport,” said Thompson.

“The first schools that took on the program were mostly ones that had teachers who were golfers or who had some affinity towards golf. We felt the addition of the life skills component could help attract other schools that were undecided about the program,” Thompson added. “We think that will resonate with the schools.”

“Our goal is to have one of these kits in every school at some point,” said McConachy. “Some schools haven’t been able to afford even the subsidized kit, so, starting this year, we’ve gone into full adoptions to make the program affordable for any school.

“We’ve been fortunate to receive a very generous fund allocation from the Shaw Charity Classic each year,” he added of $5,000 annually they receive from the PGA Tour Champions event in Calgary. These funds help Alberta Golf to provide subsidies or underwrite the full cost of the program to interested schools.

Alberta Golf sent a kit to Deer Meadow School in Olds, which has proven to be a big boost to the school’s golf program, said Principal Carey Collin.
“We have an academy program here with 42 different course offerings, including golf,” Collin explained of the junior high school.

“What we find is those life sports like curling and golf start to bolster some of the junior golf leagues and junior curling leagues in town. The membership increases at the golf course and at the curling rink,” he said.

Thompson noted that 60 per cent of schools that enter the program now obtain full subsidies from donations from individuals, corporations or even the local golf course itself.

“We see that as a good investment in the future of a facility,” Thompson said. “It helps cultivate the next generation of golfers.

“We’re excited with the solid numbers now in the Golf in Schools program. With more and more facilities delivering the Future Links program as well, wecan create golf communities where golf facilities have a relationship with the school,” Thompson added. “They keep getting the students from the school to the golf course — that’s the critical piece.”

An Early Start

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

Written by Ryan Laverty

She Swings She Scores

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

When the final buzzer sounds on a National Hockey League season, the players, almost to a man, trade in their skates and composites for a pair of soft spikes and a set of stiff shafts and begin their off-season pilgrimage to the local golf course.

And while that might be a bit of a cliché or a stereotype, it’s one that Alberta Golf is hoping to build on since launching its newest program in January.

After months of planning, the She Swings She Scores program officially began its campaign to turn more of Alberta’s hockey players into golfers, focusing on females and visible minorities, such as First Nations, between the ages of six and 12.

“Our goal, as an association, is to create as much awareness as possible and to grow the game,” said Tyler McConachy, manager of youth development with Alberta Golf. “We think She Swings She Scores is one program that will do both of those things.”

Following the lead of the Golf Association of Ontario, which started the SSSS program in that province in January 2013, Alberta Golf is making a concerted effort to target a demographic that has historically been under-represented in its own membership. While golf participation numbers have dwindled across the board over the past five years, female youth golfers has been an area that has been particularly hard hit – especially on the competitive side of the sport.

In 2001, Alberta Golf had 66 girls registered in the provincial championship tournament, but by 2015 that number had fallen to just 32.

“Part of the idea behind the program was to get athletes who are already competitive in hockey and expose them to golf,” explained Angela Cooke, SSSS program coordinator for Alberta Golf. “Doing it this way, in a team setting, makes it easier for girls to get exposure to the game and to make sure they are comfortable while they learn.”

The foundation of the SSSS program is a grassroots marketing initiative. Cooke and her colleagues from Alberta Golf have worked with their peers from Hockey Alberta to identify hockey tournaments, where competing teams were primarily girls and to directly market to that crowd.

Armed with pink toques, swag bags full of goodies and a pop-up driving range net, Alberta Golf representatives set up camp in arena lobbies in Olds, Camrose and St. Albert in February and March 2016. Despite benefiting from the insights of her counterparts at the GAO, Cooke said she wasn’t entirely sure how well the first few events would go, but the reception turned out to be even better than she could have expected. Players, siblings, coaches and parents alike all seemed to gravitate to their booth, she said.

“Defining success will probably be how we transition from the hockey tournaments to the golf course, but so far everyone has been really enthusiastic about it,” said Cooke.

The second phase of the program is to recruit a few teams, or at least a majority of those teams, to organize field trips to local courses for a more fulsome introduction to the world of golf. McConachy said he’d budgeted for three or four trips for the 2016 golf season, but based on interest it appears there could be many more requests than he could have hoped for, so he will be directing some interested parties to apply for additional field trip funding from Golf Canada, which typically provides $500 grants for these types of activities.

Burgeoning programs, such as this, can often stumble in the face of immense growth because of a lack of funding, but SSSS appears to be off to a good start. The collaboration between Alberta Golf and Hockey Alberta was a key driver in the decision by Alberta Sport Connection and Sport Canada to fund SSSS for its first four years of existence. From 2016 through 2019, Alberta Sport Connection and Sport Canada will provide $32,500 per year to the program with Alberta Golf funding an additional $10,000 through its own sources.

Aaron Lavorato, sport consultant at Alberta Sport Connection, said he expected there would be no shortage of corporate donors and other community supporters that would be interested in partnering with the program down the road, but his association was excited to help get the program off the ground for Albertans.

“For us, that collaboration was very important, but so was return on investment and sustainability,” explained Lavorato. “One of the biggest challenges for a new program is to find development dollars to get it off the ground, but all of the programs we funded have a great opportunity to align with other sources of funding in the future.”

Based on the overwhelming response to the program in Ontario, it appears likely Lavorato’s predictions should come true, but the support and collaboration will need to play a big role in the success of the program.

The GAO has benefitted from two years of learning at this point and has started to mature into a broader scale offering thanks to support at the local golf club and community level. Mallory Dayman, manager of sport development for GAO, said her association purposely partnered with local golf courses and professionals when attending hockey tournaments in Ontario and the results have been remarkable. In two full years of operations, the SSSS program in Ontario has led to the creation of 22 Girls Clubs golf programs in communities around the province adding close to 200 new female golfers to the game. Going forward, the plan within the GAO is to provide support to local communities with marketing collateral and equipment as required, but to allow their community ambassadors to more readily target hockey players in their areas with the SSSS brand.

“What we’ve found is that it hasn’t just been hockey players that have joined the Girls Clubs, because the hockey players are going home and getting their friends who play soccer or their friends who do gymnastics to come out and join them,” Dayman remarked. “The idea behind She Swings She Scores was just to grow participation in the game as a whole, but selfishly we’re looking for girls who are competitive, because if it can grow into more girls playing in our competitive tournaments then all the better.”

For Alberta, at least for now, the program will take baby steps in the direction of improving participation numbers and promoting physical literacy in our youth.

“A number of sports are looking at how, as national associations, we can cross-promote our sports,” explained Jeff Thompson, chief sport officer at Golf Canada. “The concept of physical literacy is something that everyone is very focused on and I think She Swings She Scores is a good example of organizations working together to promote that.

“The more kids we can get introduced to more sports, the better off we will all be down the road.”

In its first year of operation, the SSSS team set up shop at hockey tournaments in Olds, Camrose, St. Albert, golf shows in Calgary and Edmonton, and finally at Exshaw School where Alberta Golf team members provided girls between Grade 3 and Grade 8 with their first exposure to golf. The plan for next year, said McConachy, is to keep building the momentum.

“As of right now, it’s the more the merrier for the number of girls involved,” said McConachy. “The interest we’ve seen has been great and the girls we’ve reached already have that competitive spirit, so hopefully we can get that transitioned into golf as well.”

For more information on the program or to have the She Swings She Scores attend your hockey tournament, event or school next year contact Angela Cooke at (403) 236-4616 or by email at angela@albertagolf.org.

She Swings She Scores

This article was originally published in the 2016 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

On the score card, the game begins at the first tee box. For the players however, it starts long before that. Team Alberta has been performing phenomenally well to start the 2016 season. The CN Future Links Pacific Championship in Kamloops turned out to be one of the best all-around tournaments in recent history for Alberta players, and the PGA Junior Masters was won by Team Alberta members on both the girls and boys sides. All of this considered, it is easy to get lost in the magic that seems to be happening on the course during tournament play. Although, if you asked the players, they’d tell you that magic has nothing to do with it.

Christopher Horton (right) take a minute to read the green on 9 during the practice round at The Dunes at Kamloops.

Tournament preparation for the budding Alberta Golf Team starts long before tee time, days before in fact. Competing in national events means extensive travel, often times all over the country. For the CN Future Links Pacific Championship in Kamloops, it was an eight hour bus ride through the Rockies that brought Team Alberta to the tournament. Once the team arrives at their destination, their pre-competition routine has all but begun. The day before official play begins, the team is up with the sunrise and on course for an early shot gun start. During their practice round, players need to fine tune their game, discuss strategy with their coaches, and familiarize themselves with a course that is miles from home.

Randy Robb discusses strategy with two of his players during the practice round at The Dunes at Kamloops.

Team Alberta’s day is far from over when they step off the course. Team meetings, healthy meals, and an evening yoga session are awaiting them upon arrival back at the hotel. Amongst this extensive routine, the players find support in each other in order to relax and mentally prepare for the busy few days of competition ahead of them. Finally, last minute adjustments are put in place at early driving range and putting green sessions the morning of the opening round. With that, the game before the game comes to an end, and the competitors make their way to the tee box with the hope that all their hard work will translate to low scores for themselves and their teammates. The video (below) chronicles the events discussed above, providing a behind the scenes look into Team Alberta’s early success so far this season.