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Youth golf thrives in Mahoning Valley, but not without challenges
By Pete Mollica
Over the years, the Mahoning Valley has been a hot bed for junior golf and has produced a great number of outstanding amateur and professional golfers.
Junior Golf Kelly Fleming
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Greatest Junior Player? The Greatest Golfer of the Valley tournament sponsored by Farmers National Bank and The Vindicator adds the “Greatest Junior Golfer in the Valley” in 2011. All players will get to compete for part of $5,000 in scholarships provided by PowerBilt Golf and Golf Headquarters in Boardman and Niles. The Greatest will be crowned on July 31 at Trumbull Country Club. But to get a chance at the Greatest and the scholarships, players must enter one of the qualifiers:
Even today with the area economy suffering, junior golf is still flourishing in many ways. But it is not without its challenges — from busy parents to too many competing high school athletics.
Where junior golf thrives is with committed local professionals and coaches from this area who came up through those junior ranks and doing their part to keep the game alive for today’s youngsters.
One of those former junior standouts is John Kerins, a PGA member and director of golf at Tam O’Shanter Golf Club in West Middlesex, Pa.
“I think that kids today have a lot more opportunities to play tournament golf than back when I was a youngster,” Kerins said. “There are so many more tournaments now. When we played we had maybe three or four tournaments a year, now our Tri-State PGA offers 15 tournaments alone for juniors.”
“I also think that today’s junior have the advantages of better equipment, the courses are better and they play with better golf balls,” he added.
“But it is still the same game as it was back when we played and you still have to go out and hit the ball and get it in the hole.”
Kerins said that he has noticed a drop-off in numbers on the high school golf teams and this concerns him.
“I think that it has a lot to do with the schools offering so many sports and the kids are forced to choose between them and it has diluted the golfers here in our area,” he added.
“Our junior golf programs here at Tam O’Shanter has remained strong,” he added. “We still have over 120 golfers enrolled and that makes me happy.”
Trumbull Country Club head golf professional John Diana also believes that today’s juniors have as many, if not more, events to participate in, but doesn’t think the participation level is as good.
“I think we had a lot more kids involved in the junior tournaments and there was a lot more competition,” Diana said. “I can remember us having well over 100 entries in the Insurance Classic fields back then.”
“I guess a lot of it goes hand in hand with today’s economy,” he added. “I think that we still have as many teenagers involved in the game, but the number of younger kids seems to be dropping steadily.”
“The American Junior Golf Association is still strong, but to participate in that involves a lot of running around all over the state,” he continued.
“Parents are not as involved today as they were back then, they just don’t have the time or the money.”
“Local junior tournaments use to be the big thing around here when I was playing. We really looked forward to taking part in them.”
Diana said that his junior program at Trumbull Country Club has about 30 kids enrolled, most of them in the Pee Wee division from 4-7 years of age.
“I can remember back when I was at Avalon Golf Course and we would have over 100 kids every year in the program. Now we try and make it a fun type atmosphere for them,” he said.
Deborah Rura, who operates Tamer Win Golf Course in Cortland, has been running junior golf tournaments for 18 years.
“We started our junior program combining both boys and girls, but found out that we could do much better holding two separate events for them,” she added.
“Our boys tournaments have been running for 18 years and we began our girls only tournament 15 years ago and it has been much more successful,” Rura added.
“We found that the girls were always stuck back with late tee times and the participation was down, so we split them up and hold the boys event on a Friday and the girls the following Monday and it has worked out very well.”
“The numbers keep going up each year,” she said. “Last year, we had 75 girls in our tournament.”
Rura doesn’t feel that there is enough local support for the junior golfers.
“A lot of kids are sitting at home because they don’t have a ride to the golf courses and it is a lot more expensive for these kids to play these days also.”
“I can remember when I was a youngster, we use to walk down Route 46 just to get to the golf course. But of course that not something that you’d want to do these days,” she said.
Rura said that she has no problem with parents who want to drop off their kids to play nine holes during the week and encourages them to do so.
“We still do junior clinics and our junior league is beginning its 12th season at the course,” she added.
Junior golfers from the Mahoning Valley will have another tournament this year as the first Greatest Junior Golfer in the Valley tournament will be conducted next month.
There will be three qualifying tournaments held at Diamondback (July 5), Tamer Win (July 8 & 11) and Tam O’Shanter (July 21) and the four top boys and girls at each of the qualifying sites will advance to the Greatest Junior Golfer of the Valley finals to be held July 31 at 1 p.m. at Trumbull Country Club.