In May, I will be playing in my third Golf Marathon raising money for The First Tee of Northwest Arkansas. I’m playing in The First Tee Golf Marathon to raise money for kids like Lauren. Lauren is one of the first kids I met when I started working at The First Tee of Northwest Arkansas. She was in my very first Girls Only class that I taught in April of 2017. We connected quickly and she started taking individual lessons with me most weeks as well. She was quiet when we first met and reminded me of myself at 11 years old.
In the Girls Only classes that I was teaching on Tuesday nights for my first two years at The First Tee, I would teach the same curriculum as the coed classes, but there was always something different about those Tuesday 
night classes. I connected with the girls and began catering the classes more to what they needed to hear. We talked a lot about confidence and how golf can help you accept yourself for who you are and inspire you to get outside of your comfort zone. I worked with Lauren and the rest of the class through the summer months and really fell in love with teaching these girls.
Once school started back in the fall, I had really seen Lauren become more outgoing and really comfortable being herself. One afternoon when I was in my office, I had a knock on the door from her dad. He popped in to tell me that Lauren had just auditioned for her school’s musical, Alice in Wonderland. He was so proud of her for auditioning and told me that it was 100% because of the confidence she had developed in The First Tee Girls Only classes over the last year. He said that she was brave enough to go outside of her comfort zone and was not afraid to fail. The thing I was most proud of (as was her father) was her reaction to the fact that she did not get the part she wanted. Lauren had learned, through The First Tee Life Skills curriculum, how to handle an outcome that was not what she wanted. She had learned how to be happy for someone else’s success without falling into self pity. She was positive after failing. This is one of the best skills she could learn from my classes. I am proud of The First Tee because of people like Lauren. We teach more than golf at The First Tee. We teach kids how to be better friends, better athletes, better human beings.
THIS IS WHY I LOVE MY JOB!
I am thankful for the chance to work with wonderful kids everyday like Lauren and I am asking you to make a donation to help me be able to continue working with wonderful kids like her. I am asking you to make a donation so we can keep our fees low enough to work with kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds and make golf more accessible. I am asking you to help me make a difference in more kids’ lives through The First Tee of Northwest Arkansas. Please consider sponsoring me BY CLICKING HERE as I play in The Golf Marathon for the third year.
Golf and God 