NEWS

Durham Scholars Golf Association to hold ‘Tee off for Summer’ event Saturday

CHAPEL HILL -- The Durham Scholars Golf Association, which uses golf as a focus in working with at-risk youth, will launch into full swing on Saturday (June 14) with its official "Tee off for Summer" event.

The golf association, which recently received a $26,500 grant from The PGA of America’s Growth-of-the-Game program and a $20,000 grant from The USGA Foundation, is a new extension of the Durham Scholars Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Based within the school’s Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, the Durham Scholars Program is an education-intervention program for seriously disadvantaged youth living in economically distressed areas of Durham.

The "Tee off for Summer" event, for participating students from the golf association and their parents, will begin at 9 a.m. at the Duke University Golf Club driving range with the first of weekly golf lessons for the students and end with a cookout.

The Durham Scholars Program is funded by the W.R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. The program’s design is to foster college access for students who face challenges in their neighborhoods such as teen pregnancy, gang activity and drug use. The program concentrates on academics and other "soft skills," and will fund up to $10,000 per year toward tuition and fees for those participants who graduate from high school and qualify for college.

The first class of sixth-graders graduated from the program in May 2002. The Durham Scholars Golf Association, which completed a successful pilot in 2002, adds an athletic component mirroring the academic focus of the overall program, officials said.

With PGA instructors from the Duke University Golf Club and the use of other area facilities as needed, up to 40 young students receive lessons on how to play the game and learn the history of golf. Part of their instruction is learning how honesty and civil behavior set forth in the USGA’s "Rules of Golf" are analogous to life’s rules and laws and make the game work. Instructional clinics, visits by famous golfers and sports figures, and audiovisual educational sessions round out the program.

Golf is also used as a means of practicing anger management, decision making, problem solving, risk assessment and other skills.

The USGA Foundation helped support the association’s pilot year and shape the plan for this year’s program.

"Golf, with its many challenges to mind and body, has often been celebrated as a metaphor for life," said Dr. James H. Johnson Jr., a UNC management professor who directs the Durham Scholars Program. "This will enable them to cross bridges into new communities and learn values essential to their success as hard-working and law-abiding citizens, with confidence in their coping skills."

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Note: Media representatives who wish to cover the Saturday event should contact Tim Miller at (919) 681-2288 or millertm@duke.edu, Martin Carmichael at (919) 489-1633 or Mar2lin@aol.com or Kim Spurr at (919) 962-8951 or spurrk@unc.edu.

News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu