Going into our summer season this year marks my one year anniversary with The First Tee of Greater Charleston, and what an amazing year it has been! Thank you to all our participants and volunteers, we made it through this year with safety as our #1 priority and I can confidently say we did a great job!
During my year with the First Tee, I have seen our program grow immensely. First Tee participants are becoming better golfers everyday.
As a teaching pro, the first aspect of a good shot I judge for is the sound. When our First Tee students hit down and make a divot from under the ball going forward they create that click sound that indicates the ball has been hit solidly on the sweet spot. Hitting down is the key to getting airborne and really, that is my goal with a lot of our PLAYer and PAR classes. Normally with our juniors, if we get the ball in the air we actually get a lot of consistency in their shots.
While I love teaching the golf swing to our juniors, I have also enjoyed covering our life skills. As our kids are progressing through the different levels of First Tee they are becoming more and more aware of the life skills and how to use them in everyday life. I see this as we get into the Advanced PAR level and Teen group – the kids start introducing themselves to each other using the meet and greet skill on their own. It is skills like these that seem like mostly common sense, but practicing them with the kids proves to be so useful in everyday life. Just sit back and think parents, how often you meet people during your week? We are teaching the kids how to handle these introductions in a way that is respectful and courteous, believe it or not they will use this skill everyday and it’s something I have improved on myself just by teaching the juniors.
Going forward I am looking forward to an exciting summer of First Tee as Lexie and I’ll be teaching both the Outreach and Core programs!
As a final note I’d like to encourage all First Tee Participants to use their cards that they’ve earned to come out and practice creating that “click” sound more often.
I look forward to seeing y’all at the course this summer!
- Brandon Ray
