Stonecutters Ridge Golf Club, winner of this month’s award, has a structured cadet program in place for juniors. The cadet program has proven to be popular, with approximately 50 juniors involved who receive coaching sessions, clinics and have the opportunity to play a few holes on the championship course on Saturday afternoons.
So why join the MyGolf program?
Glen Haynes, the MyGolf coordinator at Stonecutters Ridge, wanted to provide the juniors with the opportunity for further coaching in a well-structured format outside of the cadet program. Aligning with the MyGolf program, Australia’s national junior program seemed like the perfect thing to do.
“The MyGolf program is great! I quite like how life skills have been incorporated into the program for the juniors to learn,” said Haynes.
“The coordinator manual provides detailed session plans and a variety of suggested activities that can be used. The online functionality of the MyGolf program helps enormously with registration and it is so easy to set course dates and times on the website for juniors to register into.’’
Stonecutters Ridge ran its first MyGolf program in term two. Despite wanting to run a 10-week program, they had to reduce the program to five weeks due to extreme wet weather and flooding.
“At one stage our driving range was a river bed under approximately eight feet of water!” said Haynes.
Despite the weather conditions, Stonecutters Ridge still managed 22 junior registrations into their programs that were run on a Saturday and Wednesday afternoons, a great result.
“The juniors were extremely excited to receive their packs and it’s great to see them proudly wearing their caps,” said Haynes.
“A number of the juniors who already had their own clubs were quite happy to pass their 7-irons onto younger brothers and sisters, which was great to see.”
After running its first successful MyGolf program Stonecutters Ridge will be running a winter camp during the school holidays, which is already booked out.
Stonecutters Ridge will also run a number of programs throughout term three. Glen anticipates around 28 junior registrations into that program, but will certainly welcome many more.
Glen plans on keeping the juniors engaged in the Stonecutters MyGolf program by ensuring the sessions are fun, varied and have a slight competitive element to them especially as the skill levels of the junior’s progress.
The Junior Committee at Stonecutters Ridge understand that juniors are the future of the club and meet on a regular basis to discuss junior development.
Congratulations to Glen and his team at Stonecutters Ridge on running a successful term two program. We look forward to seeing your success continue.