By Bridget Ackley, PGA
The Park West Palm officially opened on April 17, 2023. The Park was founded with the mission “to positively impact lives” and has much to offer the South Florida public golf community. The amenities at The Park include an 18-hole championship course, a lighted nine-hole Par 3 course, a lighted driving range with Toptracer technology, a nine-hole putting course, The Shop, an outdoor Cabana, a restaurant called The House that opened at the beginning of October, a two-acre SNAG golf area, a state-of-the-art performance studio and most importantly, a community center.
The Keith A. James Community Center offers a variety of programming through our Path program. Our community programming provides local youth and families of West Palm Beach with educational opportunities, mentorship and life skills development. We have created authentic, inclusive, inviting community programs to inspire and drive the next generation of leaders. We aim to provide West Palm Beach’s local youth and families with programs that simultaneously build character and skill while keeping our core value of fun at the center. Our classes range from homework help to financial coaching, STEM, art and college preparation courses. Our mission of The Path is to grow the game (and its future players) on and off the course.
The Park partnered with two Title 1 grade schools and one Title 1 middle school in the West Palm Beach area for our Path programming and hopes to add more schools through our Mobile SNAG program. The Fairway Finders program, which these partnered schools are part of, has been the most significant junior program that I have ever been part of in my coaching career. Each school comes to The Park twice a week for one hour of homework help from a teacher from their respective school and one hour of golf instruction with The Park’s coaching team. The Path programs are free of cost and funded by our foundation.
Due to circumstances out of their control, the juniors in our Path program have dealt with the recent loss of a parent, have dealt with homelessness and sometimes do not know where their next meal comes from outside of school. With these heavy life situations in mind, I aim to provide a fun lesson emphasizing the American Development Model while creating a weekly lesson plan. Many juniors need more fundamental movement skills, such as locomotor skills (running, jumping, hopping and galloping), balance, and ball skills (throwing, kicking and catching). With the dire need to focus on athletic longevity, The Park created a unique opportunity by hiring a local PE teacher to help advocate for our junior’s well-being and athleticism. The PE teacher works alongside the golf coaches to develop and deliver the weekly lessons.
A typical day for a junior arriving for the Fairway Finders program looks like the following: the child comes to the community center and a guardian registers them for class. They choose their healthy snacks and drinks and then go into the classroom area. Once the juniors have had their snack, they are split into two groups. One group goes with the coaches, and one stays for homework help.
While at their golf lesson, we always begin with an age-specific warmup activity that provides some challenge. One favorite warmup activity has been creating an agility course that utilizes all aspects of athletic development. The fun factor of the warmup typically dictates how long we spend focusing on the warmup. If the juniors enjoy themselves while doing the warmup, we may spend most of the hour doing that because they are having fun and working on their athleticism. Two golf skills are often introduced and worked on during the class. Since the group typically has twelve juniors in one class, one coach will take the juniors to play a golf-specific game while the other coach plays another game at a different station. Once the hour-long lesson is complete, the coaching team brings the juniors back to the community center to switch with the group inside for homework help.
Being part of the staff at The Park and explicitly working with the juniors in our Fairway Finders program has been the most impactful part of my career in junior golf thus far. I have always been known as the “fun coach” due to the energy I bring to my daily coaching and my creativity with games and activities. Still, this program provides more meaning and depth to what I am doing as a PGA Professional junior golf coach. These juniors are dealing with such unimaginable things at their young age that I approach these lessons from a different coaching lens because I need to show them love and provide a safe space. I hope the juniors of The Path know how proud I am of them and that I am rooting for them in all aspects of their lives. I believe The Park has accomplished its mission “to positively impact lives” in a significant way in just a matter of months by being intentional with whomever we partner with. I am honored to be part of the team at The Park and excited to see the continued growth of our community programs.
Bridget Ackley, PGA is the PGA Lead Coach/Junior Golf Leader at The Park West Palm in West Palm Beach, Florida. She is a U.S. Kids Golf Level 2 Certified Coach, U.S. Kids Top 50 Coach and three-time GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional. She is TPI-Certified and was honored with the 2021 South Florida PGA Section Youth Player Development Award.
