Junior News

Congratulations to Nicola Rawlinson

Our congratulations goes to Nicola Rawlinson Who has also been accepted as a member of the Royal Birkdale Golf Club. Nicola who is just 19 year old has been tutored by our golf professional Colin Burgess and she has achieved a handicap of just 1.6 Joining Royal Birkdale is a major mile stone in her golf career. 

North Lancs Finals Day

The Junior Section are very proud of winning North Lancs Finals day

E Stockton, J Parker, J Burke,  O Lonsdale,  M Morris, and I Crabtree. 

Junior Lady Captain's Day

Junior Captain's Day

I am very honoured to have been chosen as the Junior Captain for 2009.

I have enjoyed my years here at Leyland Golf Club as a junior and hope to make this year even more exciting.

The Junior Section is full of talented young players and I hope that this year we can increase the amount of players and encourage juniors of all ages to play to the best of their ability.

I would like to wish everyone good luck for 2009!

Lee Clayton 

Junior Section Report to Management Committee 22nd May 08

Committee set up

Junior Captain                    Lee Clayton
Junior Vice Captain            Jonathan Croft
Junior Organiser                 David Brierley
Junior Welfare Officer         Jessie Higham
Team Manager                   Neil Williams
Competitions                      Gary Parker & Nev Crabtree John Croft
Communications                 Gary & Helen Parker
Special Projects                  Steve Rawlinson
Beginners 9 Hole Events     John Ingram & John Wright
Coaching                            Colin Burgess
Members                            Duncan Clayton, Steve Woroniuk

We have 2 objectives for 2009. 

1. Grow the sections membership
2. Ensure all members are taking part in the events that are organised for them. 

Actions to grow the membership revolves around encouraging the 8 to 12 year age range through a series of initiatives.

Coaching

Jan to March programme saw 25, 8 to 12 year olds and 14, 12 to 16 year olds attend, in total there where 14 members.

Passport to Golf

Clubmark approved coaching which began on 11th May, there are 15 in the beginners class and 7 in the intermediate class of the 22, 8 are members.

9 Holers

We have held 2 so far, 10 and 14 turned up to play of those only 2 are non members and they will be soon.  

Community Links programme

Carl Lucas, South Ribble Borough Councils Sports Development Officer, has made this programme prescriptive for the 5 feeder primary schools for Worden Sports College. He has purchased Tri Golf for all 5 and supplied the college with Extreme Golf.

Colin starts this programme in early June with the 5 feeder schools.

Colin estimates 100 in the junior schools will attend 6 sessions on a Tuesday or Thursday in school time and 20 from Worden College.

South Ribble has stated that they want to encourage golf into the schools as much as possible. This means we have a ready made catchment for those who want to develop further. This is the start to something that could be a lot bigger.

They will also be recognising all clubs who have achieved Golfmark and Clubmark. We know they want to work with us because we are the only Clubmark club in the area.

Net effect of these initiatives means we have had 12 new members since Jan 08, 4 of which joined in May. We now have 52 members.

Leyland Junior Team playing in North West Lancs. League

At the end of 2007 we lost 5 single figure players, Josh Wareing, Lewis Heaton, Emma Naughton, Phil Brown to age and Nicola Rawlinson to Lancashire Girls.

We only have 2 left Chris Dobson and Jonathan Croft, who is currently injured. We therefore are in transition with the Team.

Lewis supported by Steve Woroniuk has encouraged a wider range of abilities to the team, we always play 2 reserves home or away so they can gain experience.

They took a battering at Morecambe in the high winds we lost 15 points to 0; at Longridge we managed our first points loosing 10 points to 4. Then success on Sunday with us beating Shaw Hill 10 points to 4. This will have worked wonders for their confidence, you could physically see it lift when it fed through the course that they where winning.

A point worth noting is that at the end 2007 Shaw Hill only had 22 Junior members they are up to 30 now.

Other Actions

 S.R. is currently reviewing the statistics to establish which members are not playing in any of the activities we have for the Section, that information will allow us to tackle those and hopefully get them involved so we don’t loose them in 2009.

More juniors are taking part in the Sunday morning medals with 18 playing in the RBS cup.

One issue that arises is that on Team Match days the majority wish to play in the medal as a warm up but when we play away they run out of time so we request that we be given the tee earlier to allow those in the Team to have sufficient time to play. The dates affected are 8th June, 10th & 16th August.

We would like to play the aborted Ashes Trophy at some stage during the summer. We have a gap on 13th July, Guild Cup is on at Shaw Hill and the Ladies are at Longridge, with nothing else in the diary.

We have been invited to attend South Ribble Sports Awards on 6th June, we are told we will receive recognition for our Clubmark achievement. I have nominated Colin Burgess in the Sports Coach of the year category. I have no doubt this will give us some good publicity.

There are tickets available should any member of the Committee wishes to attend.

To finish on a high and prove the actions we started last year is working, 2 weeks ago in the RBS trophy Emma Stockton won it with a net 61. This time last year she was a shy 12 year old not sure golf was right for her, she joined in on the 9 holers and started to gain in confidence, towards the end of the season she gained her handicap of 36 and now plays of 28.

This plus the Teams win against Shaw Hill demonstrates to me that we are now starting to impact the section and hopefully grow it.