PGA of BC Members Come Out Swinging For ALS

Brett Standerwick Of Fairwinds Golf Course Has Been A Longtime Supporter And Fundraiser For The Annual Golfathon For ALS - Standerwick Image Courtesy Fairwinds

By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf

Like so many other members of the Professional Golfers Association of BC, Brett Standerwick has been a longtime supporter of the organization’s annual golfathon for ALS

Standerwick, who is sales and revenue manager at Fairwinds Golf Course in Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island, has also tried to put his own personal stamp on a fundraiser that is now more than a decade old. “Typically, guys go out and you play from dawn to dusk and play as many holes and you can,” Standerwick says.

“That’s fun but we all do the same thing, so after the first couple of years I started to think about what I could do that was something different, just to try and increase the exposure a little bit.”

One year, Standerwick took his 8-iron and some biodegradable wooden golf balls and hit balls during a five-day trek up and down the Golden Hinde, Vancouver Island’s tallest mountain. “I carried a chunk of range mat with me attached to my backpack and just one club,” he says.

“I was three days up and two days down. I would play shots and walk to wherever it landed and put the mat down and hit it again and keep going. Those compressed wooden balls barely fly anywhere. I was using an eight-iron and hitting it as hard as I could and it was going about 80 yards.”

                                                                     image courtesy als society of bc

Brett Standerwick Hits A Drive Off The Top Of Golden Hinde, Vancouver Island's Highest Mountain 

ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a neurodegenerative disease where the nerve cells that control your muscles die. It is often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The former New York Yankee great died of the disease in 1941.

To honour Gehrig, Standerwick one year played the golfathon using a baseball bat to tee off on every hole. “Gehrig’s single-season RBI record was 184 so I played 184 holes, but I teed off on every single hole with a baseball bat wearing a Gehrig jersey and Yankees hat,” he says. “That was challenging. I hit lots of pop-ups. It’s hard to hit a golf ball with a baseball bat.”

Standerwick is once again planning to do something different for this year’s ALS fundraiser. He has a trip planned in September that will see him play four rounds of golf on four different islands. “I used to live on Bowen Island for eight years and l lived on Gabriola for seven years, so I have a healthy connection with the Gulf Islands and I have done lots of paddling.

None of the Gulf Island courses participate in the golfathon from year to year so I wanted to try and include them and open up to their membership base. I'll start here at Fairwinds, play 18 holes here, paddle from here to Gabriola play 18 holes at Gabriola, paddle from Gabriola to Salt Spring, play 18 holes on Salt Spring and paddle from Salt Spring to Pender and finish on Pender Island.”

The golfathon originated in 2005, when a Comox-area ALS patient, Bruce Taylor, was discussing the lack of awareness surrounding the disease with his friends, Scott Fraser and Jerry Feniak. At the time, Fraser was head pro at Glacier Greens Golf Club in Comox, while Feniak was a member of the Rotary Club. The trio came up with the idea to lend their muscles and courses for a day of golf, while enlisting the volunteer support of the Rotarians.

Fraser completed the first golfathon in September of 2005, playing 288 holes -- the equivalent of 16 rounds -- and raised over $6,000 in support of the ALS Society of B.C. Since then, more than 190,000 holes have been played, eight holes-in-one recorded and, most importantly, $1,177,580 raised.

“What floors me is they keep exceeding everyone’s expectations and raising more money every year,” says Donald Miyazaki, executive director of the PGA of BC. “It is just a membership that is so giving.” 

Chris Currie, golf sales manager at the Westin Bear Mountain Golf Resort & Spa in Victoria, has a deeply personal connection to the golfathon. He lost his father, Leonard, to ALS. “He passed when he was 73 and had the disease for just over two years,” says Currie. “The first year I did the golfathon I had pictures up there to help me get through the day.”

image courtesy facebook/pgabc

Merritt's Roger Sloan Tees Off With Bear Mountain Director Of Golf Jordan Ray, Golf Sales Manager Chris Currie And Assistant Pro Lenny Cyr In The ALS Golfathon 

Currie participated in the golfathon this past June with director of golf Jordan Ray and assistant pro Jaegan Patron. They were joined for 18 holes of their 100-hole odyssey by Web.com Tour member Roger Sloan of Merritt.

Dale Schienbein, the longtime head pro at Seymour Golf & Country Club in North Vancouver, and assistant pro Lenny Cyr routinely raise more than $30,000 each year. “We have had so much fabulous support from our membership,” Schienbein says. “The club has really embraced this.

The number of individual pledges to me is overwhelming. It sounds cliche but it is humbling when you see that kind of support. The number of people who have come up to me and said, ‘I had an aunt, I had an uncle, I had a father-in-law. . .It just seems like the disease has touched so many people.”

No one is more appreciative of the efforts of the PGA of BC members than Wendy Toyer, executive director of the ALS Society of B.C. “We are so thrilled with the success of this event and the fact that it keeps growing every year is amazing,” Toyer says. “By the end of this year, because there are still a couple of courses that are going to do it, we anticipate we are going to hit the $1.5-million mark.”