Junior Golf Booming At Sheep Pasture Golf Course In Lillooet
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
Things get a little busy late Wednesday afternoons this time of year at Sheep Pasture Golf Course in Lillooet.
In addition to the herd of 80 or 90 sheep and lambs grazing on the course, there are almost as many kids swinging clubs on the nine-hole layout. “We have created a bit of a monster,” club president Bob Sheridan jokes as he discusses the club’s popular junior golf program.
That program, run in conjunction with Lillooet’s Just Do it Sport Society, now boasts 70 kids who show up every Wednesday afternoon looking to play golf and have some fun. Not necessarily in that order.
Sheridan and the Lillooet business community that has rallied behind the program are delighted to see the number of youngsters coming out to the course each week. But Sheridan says the program’s popularity has created a problem he didn’t envision. “We don’t have enough adults to supervise all the kids,” he says. “We need to make sure the kids are not horsing around and hitting balls all over the place because it becomes dangerous.
“I have gone out with as many as eight kids and it’s really hard. The baby lambs are out there now, so we have to play around the sheep. With the little kids watching the baby lambs and trying to golf, it’s not the easiest thing. You really need one adult for every four kids. If you are sending an adult out there with more than say, six kids, depending on the ages, something is going to happen. These kids are out there just having fun, swinging clubs with a ball that hurts. But even with all those challenges, it’s a success story for us, for sure.”
One of the reasons for the program’s popularity is the fact that for $5 each week, the juniors get a hot dog, snack and drink — donated by local businesses — as well as golf and coaching. They play with clubs and balls donated to the Sheep Pasture course. The kids range in age from about five to 14.
Sheridan is president of the volunteer society that runs Sheep Pasture Golf Course. When Sheridan agreed to take on the job a few years ago, he knew that a solid junior program was vital to the club’s long-term future. “I said if we don’t get juniors we’re in trouble,” Sheridan says.
“We need juniors. That is the root of everything. So we decided to get some clubs and started working with an organization in town called Just Do It Sports. It started out where we got 20 kids right off the bat, then it went to 40, then it went to 60. Now we’re up to 70.”
To solve his volunteer problem, Sheridan encourages parents who sign up their kids to play junior golf to also help supervise them while they are on the course. The program runs once a week in May and June. “Once July is here, the heat hits and parents are taking their kids camping, so May and June works best,” Sheridan says. “But they can continue to play all summer.”
Just Do it Sports also run programs for other sports like soccer, tee-ball and martial arts. To avoid conflicting with those other sports, the golf program had to run on Wednesdays. The problem was, for more than 40 years men’s night at Sheep Pasture had always been on Wednesdays. At Sheridan’s urging, men’s night was changed to Thursdays. “It took us a while to convince some of the men,” he says. “In the end, I just said, ‘This is what we’re doing, get used to it.’ And it is only for two months.
“We are trying to keep the kids busy and not doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing. It’s our goal to get all these kids doing something different three or four nights a week.”
An equal number of girls and boys show up each week and kids from the Lillooet-area First Nations bands are regular participants. Sheridan knows not all of them will grow up to be active golfers, but some will definitely take up the game and become supporters of the course in the years ahead. “Make it a bit of a playground for them,” he says. “Maybe they’ll like it, maybe they won’t, but you won’t know unless you make the course available to them.
“We‘ve already got some kids who are playing in our men’s night that are 16. Those are kids that have come from our junior program.”