/> Photo of available Wallaroo Term 2 MyGolfers
Back Row: Kasey Witt, Isaiah Furman, Harry Hurrell, Cody Witt
Front Row: Toby Nolan, Matthew Turner, Lili Bozdarovski & Charli Lamshed
The Wallaroo Golf Club is an 18-hole sand green course, with greened and watered fairways, open 12 months of the year, located on the western side of Yorke Peninsula 2hrs (157km) north-northwest of Adelaide.
In mid-2011, a new shared Clubhouse was opened providing facilities for golf, bowling and croquet players, conferences and catering for the town’s population of 3,700 and visitors alike.
In January 2015 Wallaroo Golf Club decided the time was right to register as a MyGolf Centre and established its first 10 week program in term two, experiencing a great response from local juniors.
“In November last year we were in Melbourne and saw Golf Victoria’s launch of Playgolf WEEK by the Yarra River in Federation Square. We were a Playgolf WEEK club in SA so made a point to check out Victoria’s setup and saw they were promoting juniors with junior equipment, so we had a try of that and thought this looks easy and we really wanted to come back and establish MyGolf at Wallaroo” MyGolf Coordinator Erica Nolan said.
“After I registered as a Centre and received the manual I said yeah it tells us what to do, I will be able to do this, if we just read it and follow it.’
From scratch, Wallaroo’s term two MyGolf program attracted 15 juniors from all around the area registering via the MyGolf website.
Wallaroo Golf Club which has reported an increase from 89 members (Jan 2014) to 145 members (Jan 2015) is fully supportive of the MyGolf Program.
“I asked the club members who could help me with our program as I knew I couldn’t do it all myself and quite a few put their hand up to say they could help and from there we came along to Golf SA training to became accredited Community Instructors.”
“Within the Club we have six Community Instructors and three volunteers who help out. So we actually have nine helpers each week and generally we put two Instructors with each group of four.” Nolan added.
When asked what the biggest benefit to joining the program was, Erica had nothing but praise for the resources available.
“I love the manual as a guide and how you go through the steps and games and how to teach. I’m learning myself, I played as a junior and then went away and I’m only just coming back into the game. But the manual tells and shows you what to do which is great.” Erica said.
The main goal of the MyGolf program is to provide a nationally accredited program which is fun, accessible and a satisfying introduction to the sport of golf by promoting skills development, as well as the social and fun aspects of the sport.
Running their term two sessions Sunday’s from 10 – 11am with a really good attendance record, the juniors at Wallaroo seem to be having a great time in the program according to Erica.
“They kids have definitely enjoyed it. All the feedback from our survey to parents was that the kids look forward to golf every week, asking their parents is it golf today and saying they can’t wait to come back to a session”.
“When the juniors received their packs they absolutely loved it. We gave them out week five, half way through and when they got their own 7 iron, they were responsible to bring it along each week”.
Whilst Golf Australia in conjunction with Golf SA will be looking to heavily promote MyGolf to a wider audience from mid-year, Erica understood that the club needed to be proactive in promoting their program in their local area.
“We advertised our 10 week program in all of the school newsletters, which is around 10 schools. I emailed our flyer to them all with a letter saying we would appreciate any support.
“I asked the schools if they could display our program in their newsletter and if they didn’t want to put the flyer or graphic in there I provided a little blurb they could copy and paste into the newsletter. And of course we promoted our program on our facebook page and website.”
Wallaroo also took advantage of the State Government Schools Sports voucher program where every primary student in South Australia has been issued with a $50 voucher to redeem before the end of 2015 to receive a discount when registering into a sports program. Subsequently Wallaroo priced their 10 week program at $50 resulting in a zero cost learn to play golf program for those students who chose to redeem their vouchers on golf.
After a successful start Erica plans to continue running MyGolf Programs giving the juniors a pathway to progress through the Rookie, Star and Master levels of the program.
“Our Term 3 program is online now and we are highly likely to run a term 4 program as well. With all the helpers I ‘ve got and other Community Instructors who just step in, it’s been pretty easy by spreading the load. And the kids have absolutely loved it”.
Congratulations to Erica and her team at Wallaroo Golf Club on a great result.
For the MyGolf Website > Click Here