When you drive past the Des Moines Driving Range Monday through Friday this fall and see the parking lot nearly full, please know what you are looking at.
You are looking at 50 to 125 young people from Dallas Center-Grimes, Dowling Catholic, East, North, Roosevelt, and Urbandale High Schools who still have a place to practice. You are looking at coaches and volunteers who give their time so that a full varsity or junior varsity roster does not become a reason to cut a classmate from the game.
For more than 25 years, one simple conviction has guided this work: as long as this range can help, no high school or college golf program in Iowa should have to cut a young man or a young woman because of cost or because there is no place to practice. Over those years, this range and a few courses have opened the door to thousands of students who might otherwise have been left out of a game that can last a lifetime.
This summer brought the joy of working again with a former student, Tyler Marsh, and his family. Tyler’s family has students at Dowling Catholic. Dowling is rightly known as an athletic powerhouse. What stands out just as clearly at Dowling and at every school named here is the choice to care for the overall welfare of all student athletes who may not be competing on varsity this season, yet still compete with their classmates and remain in something as healthy as golf.
The freshman and sophomore work on the range this year has been carried by Jason Worth, Joe Reed, John Grask, and Tyler Marsh. Lizzie Bartlam has done outstanding work setting range space, arranging tee times, organizing pods, and keeping communication clear. Kaela Smith is following in the steps of her late father, Mark Burke, the Iowa PGA professional who served so well at Warrior Run in Norwalk. Kaela has been a wonderful volunteer; she and her son Burke also remind us what a fine friend and great, award-winning Iowa PGA Section golf professional Mark Burke was.
Special thanks to Donna Bishop, Ed.S., Superintendent of Schools for the Diocese of Des Moines, together with every coach, volunteer, school administrator, and athletic director who has made room for these students. More than fifty young players would have been cut if it had not been for the Dowling family looking out for all of their students, much as my friends from all the other schools have done over the last 25 years.
To every young person in these programs: thank you for showing up and becoming involved. To peers across the country who are opening practice doors and keeping more students in the game: I hope the Iowa PGA Section’s example is traveling, and that is worth celebrating in other states and sections in our great association, the PGA of America. If your section or association can make space for one more roster that would otherwise be cut, you already know how much that means to the futures of our young men and women.
Forever grateful for each of you.
Sincerely,
Mark Egly
Iowa PGA Section
Des Moines Driving Range
Des Moines, Iowa
