Club teaches kids golf – and life skills

Posted

There is a golf program for kids at Mosholu Golf Course that is unlike any other being taught at courses around the city. It is a program that makes no promises it will turn your youngster into a future pro or shave strokes off your game. What it does, however, may be even better than turning out the next Rory McIlroy or Phil Mickelson.

It is called The First Tee of Metropolitan New York program and it has a different type of mission statement.

“We’re trying to create better people and better citizens,” said Barry McLaughlin, the senior director of Operations and Business Development at Mosholu.    

In a nutshell, what The First Tee program aims to do is build a better child through golf, while teaching valuable life skills along the way. The program targets minority and underprivileged kids who have had little or no exposure to golf, and tries to set them up for success.

“With our outreach programs we go out into the community and we work to identify kids who would benefit from golf and what First Tee is all about,” McLaughlin said. “Then we invite them to come here and be part of what we call our certified programs. Those programs consist of six one-hour classes. There is an entry level and then there are different levels of growth – from par to birdie, to eagle, to ace. We really want the kids to learn about First Tee, the core values and the life lessons. Some of it requires kids to be a little more mature to handle a certain level of the program. So we start with them at age 7 and we go all the way up to age 17 or 18, depending on where they are in school.”

“The First Tee is about introducing kids to the game of golf, but we’re not trying necessarily to bring out the next Tiger Woods or Annika Sorenstam,” McLaughlin added. 

It is not all about birdies, bogeys and bunkers when Mosholu pro Anthony Rodriguez takes his neophyte linksters out on the course for the golf portion of their day. Along with learning the game, the students are taught the nine core values of the First Tee program - honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy and judgment. Lessons learned in those areas are just as vital as learning to sink a 10-foot putt.

“We’re teaching them interpersonal skills, we’re teaching them how to self-manage, and then it evolves into conflict resolution,” McLaughlin said. “They progress at each of these life-skill levels based on maturity and it gives them what they’re going to need to handle that part of their life. These are things they can take with them the rest of their lives.”

The lifeblood of First Tee is its outreach program in neighboring schools and community centers that feed kids into the program. Many of the kids are minorities, but McLaughlin said the program as a whole has a wide array of kids.

“[Minorities] are our target audience but we have a nice blend of kids who come from diverse backgrounds,” McLaughlin said. “We have kids who come from backgrounds where there might be some economic challenges, but then we have some kids from the other side as well.”

The cost for the golf portion of the program is $50 for a week and $400 a week for the program’s STEM enrichment program. STEM stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.” The program offers classroom-setting activities, along with golf, to give the students a well-rounded experience. The cost can be prohibitive for many families, but Mosholu has that end covered as well.

“We’ve created a way where folks who can afford to pay for the program, they can pay 100 percent of it,” McLaughlin said. “If we have folks who need some kind of scholarships, partial or 50 percent or something like that, we have a mechanism to do that. And then if we have folks who need full scholarships to the program … we can offer that as well. We’re supported by our individual donors and corporate partners.”

Some of the major donors to the program include Barclays, PGA Tour, New York Life, Johnson & Johnson, Prudential, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland. And there is also the Rudin family.

“The individual donor is the one who really helps us keep the program affordable for our families,” McLaughlin said. “One family in particular, the Rudin Family, a big real estate family in New York City, and Bill and Michael Rudin are two of the founders of our program. Their support is well over $5 million at this point to the program. We wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without their support. Their father, Lew Rudin, was actually the visionary for all of this in New York City and Bill and Michael have carried the torch since Lew passed away in 2001. They are a great family. I can’t say enough about them.”

This year alone, Mosholu has some 1,200 kids participating in the program, according to Rodriguez, who arrived at Mosholu in late 2015. And it hasn’t taken the wanna-be Tiger Woodses long to jump all in on the program.

“I think at first blush when they get here they are like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know a facility like this was in the Bronx.’ But once they get over the ‘Wow’ factor of the beautiful grounds that we have here, then we get into the program and we explain to them what we’re really about,” McLaughlin said. “We’re going to give you a golf experience but we want to do so much more for you. At first, especially the younger ones, they just want to hit balls and have fun and really that’s what everything is built around. We try to make this as fun as we can for them … But they also learn how to be courteous and respectful of the green. They learn to be good sportsmen. These are our core values. When they are out on the course we explain to them why we want them to leave it better than when you came here. If you have to fix a ball mark or put a divot back, these are important things to do. Otherwise, the golf course isn’t going to stay nice. So it’s that responsibility to the golf course and the respect and courtesy for the next golfer who comes along, these are all our core values. And they don’t even realize they are learning them because we just inject them along the way. So core values, golfing and fun all take place at the same time.”

And it’s not just the students who are benefitting from the program.

“It’s very rewarding for me,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve been in the golf business for 21 years, and the first 15 years of my career have been working at golf courses and golf clubs. Now that I have several years under my belt with First Tee, this is all I want. The kids are wonderful.”

McLaughlin said when he meets with parents of prospective students, he usually does not have to put on a very hard sell. Not once he informs them about the scope of the First Tee program.

“This is what we tell the parents at the parent orientation,” McLaughlin said. “We say this is what we’re going to do with your young children. We’re going to bring them to a nice, safe environment. They’re going to be able to have fun, enjoy the facility, and we’re keeping an eye on them while they learn. So the parents know right away that it’s a solid program and it’s a safe environment. Their safety is our number one priority.”

One added benefit to joining the program? Cheap golf all summer long.

“If kids who participate in First Tee want to play a round of golf, it’s five dollars,” McLaughlin said. “They can play all day long for five dollars.” Greens fees at Mosholu can reach as high as $33.50 so it’s quite a bargain.

But McLaughlin is as excited about the educational component of First Tee as he is about the golf instruction. Maybe even a little more so.

“During the summer, what we offer is a curriculum of golf, life skills and STEM education,” McLaughlin said. “They might have a golf lesson in the morning for an hour, then they’ll come in and they’ll have a STEM education program, and the education piece will be related to golf somehow. They might talk about: ‘How do we measure golf?’ Golf is measured in yards. They’re getting a STEM education dialed back to golf. Then they’ll have lunch and then they go out on the course and play three or six or nine holes, depending on where they are in the program. When they’re done, they’ll come back in and have another fun activity based around STEM. It’s a fun-filled day and it goes from nine o’clock in the morning until five o’clock in the evening. It’s a full day.”

Yes, it is a full day for both students and staff, but Rodriguez wouldn’t have it any other way. He loves being an integral part of the First Tee program.

“Exposing underprivileged kids all over the city to golf who may not have the ability to get to a golf course is a great thing,” Rodriguez said. “That’s why our outreach program is so important. We go to them and we try and teach them about golf along with life skills.”

And the best part of the day for Rodriguez?

“It’s the transition when you see from the first-year kid who had zero experience, and then in year two they are on the golf course because they worked their butt off,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t just put a kid on the course, you’ve got to work for it. So it’s very rewarding to see a kid where you remember, ‘Wow, a year ago he didn’t even know how to hold a club and now he’s maneuvering around a golf course by himself.”

This year, a half-dozen former participants in the First Tee program came back to work as volunteers at Mosholu – and that says something special about the program itself.

“The alumni are an integral part of this, because nobody can speak about the program to the younger kids better than the alumni,” Rodriguez said.

As for Rodriguez, he says he’ll be a part of the First Tee program for a long time to come.

“I can see myself staying with First Tee forever,” Rodriguez said. “First Tee is always something that I’ll want to do. Being a native New Yorker, this really couldn’t be a better fit for me. I love it, I really do. It’s very rewarding.”

If you’re interested in donating to The First Tee program, visit thefirsteemetny.org. for details.   

Sean Brennan

Comments