What is Little Linksters Mission?

What is Your Mission at Little Linksters?

For me, as a PGA Golf Professional and for our team, who is made up of a diverse group of golf coaches, we passionately use the game of golf as our tool, our platform, for creating inclusionary and positive experiences for the youth in our local community. We teach a game but we also teach life skills through that game. Integrity, respect for oneself and others, inclusiveness, belonging, pride in oneself, perseverance, hard work, enjoyment, goal setting, and countless other lessons are taught in ways that are almost unseen by our students but inevitably creep into their DNA. For our younger students, we help in developing motor skills, and in our older, teenage students, we keep them moving and encourage an active lifestyle. None of this is ever overly pushed on them because these are lessons that are inherently found in golf. In the end, these virtues being instilled is combined with the sense of community and family we create and hopefully allow us to make our small mark in making the world a better place. That is something everyone should strive to do using their own unique experiences and expertise. 

Are Our Efforts Working?

After nearly 13 years in existence as a program and 10 years as a nonprofit, we have positively influenced hundreds and likely well into the thousands of children not only in our local, Central Florida community, but well beyond through some of our broader scale initiatives. I have humbly been recognized countless times over the years through local, regional, National and International awards, for the work that not only I have done but also, and most importantly, work our team has done. Most notably, being recognized as the 2017 PGA of America National Youth Player Development Award winner, as well as a US Kids Top 50 Master Kids Teacher, and Golf Range Association of America Elite Status Top 50 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional. From a community standpoint, In 2019, Orlando Family Magazine named me one of their Men of the Year Nominees. The accolades and awards fail in comparison to what we are able to achieve with each individual kid and have that spill over into their own family.

How Can People Help?

We can always use the help of not only our local community but the golf community as a whole as well as anyone that has an interest in seeing youth have an opportunity to grow as individuals through sport.

Areas we can use support...

• Financial donations to create scholarships
• Donations of supplies and equipment
• Donations of marketing resources and helping spread awareness
• Volunteers, including high school aged youth to assist in programming such as our GOALS Special Needs offering

For those that don't know, we want them to know we exist. We want them to know who we are and what we do. We want both those that don't know us and those that do, to understand our mission and what we aim to achieve through our programming. Yes, we are golf coaches and we teach golf, but there is much, much more under the surface that we aim to achieve. It is not just teaching kids how to hit a little white ball.