I recently had the enjoyable opportunity to work with the Florida Sheriff’s Youth Ranches and Tom Shea as we presented a preview, if you will, of GCSAA’s First Green program. With Tom’s ties to the Eagles Golf Club in Odessa, Florida, we had a great venue for the evening’s festivities.

The night was great albeit not traditional. We had about 20 campers from the Florida Sheriff’s Youth Ranch on hand. We did pizza and then the Pinellas County Sheriff’s helicopter buzzed the group, which even I thought was pretty cool. I followed that (lucky me). But thanks to Andy Neiswender, superintendent at Belleair Country Club, I had a number of cool items myself that the kids enjoyed using on the practice putting green. 

Instead of having the kids rotate, I was afforded 20 minutes to introduce the group to the First Green program and discuss how it is a community outreach program that showcases our use of STEM on the course, illustrates our concern for the environment, as well as highlights superintendents as stewards of the game and the local community. I emphasized the green spaces that golf courses provide in urban environments around the world and how that provides homes for wildlife as well as the cooling and filtration the turf provides.

I was followed by Bobby Deskins, chief meteorologist from Channel 10 News in St. Petersburg. He did a great job of tying in how important the weather forecast is to superintendents and how we utilize the reports in preparing our operations on the course. I spoke with him while the campers were doing their putting challenge and I was overly impressed when he relayed that the storm off in the distance was 60 miles away. I told him that it was incredible that he could tell that just by looking at the cloud formations. He smiled wryly as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and relayed that the radar on his phone indicated the storm was 60 miles away. We both had a chuckle from the exchange even if I did appear to be a rube!

Craig Denzig from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s SWAT unit was obviously the cool dad in the group, but he was nice so I didn’t karate chop him in front of the kids. Just kidding — his arms were like pythons and I would not have won even if I tried to outrun him. He arranged to have his vehicle on the property as well as the helicopter flyover. All of this was fascinating and the kids loved it. Some of the golfers seemed concerned about the sheriff’s helicopter but nobody ran into the woods, so I think everyone was legit.

However, once we got outside on the course, we were in my world and the tools Andy Neiswender lent me put me in the cool seat for the next 15 minutes. The kids thought I was remarkable when I could guess the readings of the soil moisture meter by the way the green looked on the surface. They had fun using the tools and nobody got hurt! We also guessed the square footage of the practice green before Bobby Deskins used the measuring device that calculates the area utilizing GPS coordinates. I guessed a little high at 8,000 square feet when the green was actually closer to 6,500 square feet. 

The evening concluded with an awards ceremony as Tom Shea passed out some gifts and certificates to the children. As always, these interactions are awesome! If you are interested in hosting a First Green field trip please reach out to me at rdain@gcsaa.org or Leann Cooper at lcooper@gcsaa.org.