Young Life Golf Outing supports growing effort to help area teens
Those who love to tee it up and smack a little white pill around the acreage for a good cause will definitely want to sign up for the upcoming Young Life Golf Outing.
The annual four-man scramble golf outing will take place Saturday, June 10 at Willandale Golf Course in Sugarcreek. Registration is from 7:30-8 a.m. with a shotgun start taking place at 8:30 a.m. There will be a banquet lunch with an awards ceremony following the golf outing at approximately 1:30 p.m.
Cash awards will be presented to the first-, second- and third-place teams with long drive and proximity prizes.
All of the proceeds from the event will go toward the efforts of Young Life of Tuscarawas and Holmes counties, a club that meets weekly at Garaway and West Holmes High Schools, where high school teens can share, laugh, play games, sing and have fun with other teens in an accepting atmosphere.
Not affiliated with a specific church, Young Life has turned its focus on building self-esteem, character and leadership skills in teens with an emphasis on faith. The organization has been at Garaway High School for 14 years, where Heidi Troyer has been guiding the program that has made great strides.
"Young Life reaches out to high school students and meets them where they are. [It] builds mentoring relationships in providing a positive adult role model and hopefully allows us to share our faith with them," Troyer said. "It's exciting to see what has happened at Garaway. We've seen lives and families changed. Kids who were struggling with a lot of difficult questions and tough life situations and peer pressure have had someone to walk through that with them. We now see kids on a different track than when we met them."
At West Holmes the program is in its infancy, but Ryan Schultz has already been making some nice inroads to growing the program and making connections.
Schultz began as a Young Life mentor at Garaway before he was asked to begin the blossoming program at West Holmes High School.
He has quickly become well known around school by meeting with students weekly at school or attending sporting and extra-curricular events of the teens who are involved in the program.
“It’s grown in a lot of ways, but there are still plenty of kids who don’t know what Young Life is,” Schultz said. “It’s been a bit different because it isn’t as established as it is at Garaway, so I am as much a spokesperson as I am a leader for Young Life.”
Schultz said the school opening its doors for him to come out weekly and connect with high school students during lunch has been a real plus and has allowed him to develop some neat relationships.
“I am excited about the future of Young Life at West Holmes,” Schultz said. “Just getting a chance to sit down with teens and to get to know them has been a good experience. I am slowly gaining trust and acceptance as they get to know me, and that is only going to help us grow together.”
Troyer said working with high school kids never has a dull moment, and she has enjoyed watching many of the teens involved with the program grow in faith and in leadership.
She said the upcoming Young Life camp is always an exciting time for the teens to connect with others, make new friends and continue their personal growth. But she said that before that can happen, the Young Life staffers like herself and Schultz have to go into the schools to build relationships, which is something they are continually working on.
“Even though there are a lot of great ways for kids to get involved in their communities, there is still a great need for Young Life,” Troyer said. “It seems like more and more there are extra benefits to have teens supported by another caring adult in their lives, to walk beside them, encourage them and develop their servant leadership skills in ways that stretch them outside of their comfort zone.”
A Young Life student in high school herself, Troyer said she fully understands the value of the program, both from a teen perspective and as a mentor.
“I think one of the best things about Young Life is that it comes to the kids and meets them where they are,” Troyer said. "It isn’t a forced thing. There are no expectations. We just want these young people to realize that we care about their well-being and want them to grow.”
For more information on the golf outing or how to support Young Life, call Dick Gerber at 330-473-3684. Registrations for the golf outing are due by June 7. There also are opportunities to support YL through golf tournament sponsorships.
A Gold Sponsorship of $750 includes getting a team into the scramble, hole signage, an engraved plaque and recognition in the Young Life newsletter. A Silver Sponsorship of $500 includes all of the above other than a team entry while a Bronze Sponsorship of $250 includes hole sponsorship signage and an engraved plaque. All of the sponsorships are tax deductible.