| It is a Saturday morning in Longview, Texas. Ten-year-old Blaine Balliett is up with the sun and ready to start the day. Unlike most children his age, however, he does not head to the couch for a morning of cartoons and cereal while his parents enjoy a few more minutes of precious sleep. There is no time for that. Blaine has to get to the golf course.
Blaine's passion for golf began at one of Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children's (TSRHC) Learn to Golf Clinics in Longview in October, 2001. Blaine became a patient at TSRHC when he was just a few weeks old for treatment of congenital contracture of the joints and scoliosis. Knowing that the Hospital was a "safe haven" for Blaine, his father took him to the Learn to Golf Clinic at Pinecrest Country Club in Longview out of curiosity. Blaine was immediately hooked, and has been playing golf ever since.
TSRHC's therapeutic recreation department began offering adapted golf clinics in 1998. The clinics received a great response, and it was soon obvious that the patients' interest was exceeding the Hospital's resources. H. Winfield Padgett, a friend of the Hospital and a member of the United States Golf Association (USGA) executive committee at the time, saw that TSRHC needed help to continue expanding this important program and recommended that the Hospital apply for a USGA Foundation grant. The Hospital applied, and in 2000 the USGA Foundation granted $150,000 over a three-year period to help TSRHC expand and enhance its Junior Golf Program.
Drawing from these USGA funds and support from generous donors, TSRHC began its Junior Golf Program in the fall of 2000. Through the program's Learn to Golf Clinics, instructors teach children about golf safety, etiquette, driving, chipping and putting. The program also holds First Swing Seminars to teach golf instructors and allied health care professionals the skills they need to teach golf to students with disabilities.
The Junior Golf Program also helps the patients continue developing the skills they learned in the clinics. The Hospital uses funds from the program to give patients new sets of golf clubs and bags, develop specialized prostheses for children with special needs and award scholarship money for golf lessons.
Since its beginning, TSRHC's Junior Golf Program has grown quickly in both size and popularity. Many enthusiastic patients have attended three or four Learn to Golf Clinics since the program started. In response to the patients' eagerness to improve their game, the Hospital created Spend a Day with a Pro events. These more advanced clinics allow patients to attend personalized sessions with golf professionals.
In the past three years, the TSRHC Junior Golf Program has held six First Swing Seminars and about 20 Learn to Golf Clinics. Initially, the seminars and clinics were only offered in Dallas. However, the Hospital has expanded the program and now holds clinics and seminars at the North Texas Golf Center in Dallas, Pinecrest Country Club in Longview, Barton Creek Resort and Conference Center in Austin and Hillcrest Country Club in Lubbock. Hospital staff members hope that by continuing to offer the Junior Golf Program to cities with large patient population concentrations, they will be able to introduce more patients to the game of golf and help them develop the skills they need to continue playing.
After playing golf for almost two years now, Blaine knows that golf is "his thing." He loves meeting new people and working with golf instructors at Learn to Golf Clinics. Blaine practices almost every Saturday morning at Pinecrest Country Club with head golf pro Clayton Friend and especially likes working with his pitching wedge. Blaine has lost count of his holes-in-one, but will never forget sinking a 27-yard shot, his longest to date. Clayton Friend has continued to work with Blaine at no cost to the family.
The TSRHC Junior Golf Program has done more for Blaine than teach him to make contact with the ball and sink a putt. It has built his confidence and self-esteem and, his mother says, "empowered him to become highly involved in where he is headed in life." In addition, Blaine's new golf skills contribute to his physical therapy, helping him increase his range of motion, stability and hand strength.
Embodying the mission of the Hospital, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children's Junior Golf Program puts children first. It enables hundreds of patients to walk away from the golf course with feelings of accomplishment, a greater sense of self-esteem and, as in Blaine Balliett's case, the beginnings of a lifelong love for the game of golf.
For more information about the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children or their junior golf program, go to www.tsrhc.org |
