Chris Yoder

Please indicate past awards won/recognitions:
PGA Section Teacher of the Year, GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, Other (Indicate specific awards below in 3-a)

Other awards won:
SOPGA Youth Player Development – US Kids Top 50 Master Coach – PGA Junior League Game Changer Award

Total number of individual lessons given per year:
Male: 150
Female: 75
Junior: 675

Total number of individual clinics given per year:
285

Please indicate any Growth of the Game initiatives your facility/academy has launched over the past year (please give specifics on such programs):
In addition to continuing to grow the programs at Scioto Country Club that we have built over the past 5 years a few highlighted growth of the initiatives are listed below.

PGA Junior League Team

Over the past year we have continued to build and grow our PGA Junior League program not only at Scioto Country Club but around the entire Southern Ohio community. Our players continue to love the team format and the level of play is stronger than ever. Our philosophy has been to build a junior golf community and this season we have set out to not only grow our junior community but we have made it a goal to impact our communities through volunteering.

Smiling for Life at Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Our pga junior league team has volunteered multiple times at Nationwide Children’s Hospital through a program called Smiling for Life. This program has brought the game of golf to young patients, family and friends by using SNAG golf. This has provided a much needed distraction for young patients who are going through challenging times. Our pga junior league team has taught golf to patients who have never played golf before along with many who at one time were able to play golf but unfortunately are no longer able to. It has been great to bring new people into the game in addition to bringing some back to golf. This has brought so many smiles to kids and families and has been extremely powerful!

PGA Reach Southern Ohio

Our competitive PGA Junior League team qualified for the PGA Jr League National Championship in Frisco, Texas November 16-20 and will represent Team Ohio. This is the first time our program has qualified which speaks to the level of golf our program is producing. But more importantly our program is finding deeper meaning that just competing at the National Championship. Our program has decided to use this platform to put together a fundraising effort to bring awareness to PGA Reach Southern Ohio which will support Veterans, underserved communities and youth golf. Every birdie our team makes will help give back and grow the game of golf. Currently our team has pledged $240 per birdie with a goal of raising $20,000. After school and on days off school, our team has been very creative is how to raise funds as several of the team members have raked leaves in exchange for donations.

Our effort to give back to the community and grow the game of golf has been noticed this week in Frisco as the PGA of America recognized our efforts with a feature story on their website PGA.com and throughout their social media accounts. Hopefully this continues to grow the game and help pay it forward to the game we all love so much!

Please check out the feature story on PGA of America’s website as The PGA does a great job sharing our efforts.

https://www.pga.com/

https://www.pga.com/story/2025-pga-jr-league-championship-why-team-ohios-birdies-carry-extra-meaning

https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/youth-golf-team-birdies-for-a-good-cause-at-national-championship/

Please share any programming you have made to keep your customers & students engaged:
2025 Junior Golf Program Overview 

The 2025 season marked another strong year for junior golf at Scioto Country Club. Several of our juniors took a big step forward this season winning multiple times across Golfweek, SOPGA, US Kids, High School tournaments as well as team tournaments including Interclubs and SOPGA Section tournaments. The comprehensive recreational and competitive programs that have been built over the past 5 seasons have significantly impacted our club leading to many incredible accomplishments.

Building a holistic program – Mental Coach Sessions/Team Workouts Bonding and Building Relationships to Retain Customers

During the winter and early spring, the Scioto Junior Team partnered once again with TPI certified trainer David Gatshall for team workouts to focus on strength, flexibility, and clubhead speed.  These workouts were geared towards building an overall athlete, helping juniors with their swing, creating lifelong health habits and building mental toughness.  We had 7 sessions throughout the year with Sport Psychologist Dr. Todd Kays to improve the mental side of our juniors. Dr. Kays provided great insight and help for our juniors to utilize in both a practice and competitive context. In April, we held our first rules seminar with Matt Lefferts the executive director of the Ohio Golf Association as knowing the rules of golf is extremely important for avoiding costly penalties and mistakes. We also brought in Alex Huang who is the COO of Decade Golf to help our juniors with on course strategy and determining the highest percentage shot or best practice for certain scenarios to improve consistency and stroke average.  Finally, in May, we took eight of our competitive juniors to Omaha, Nebraska to see PGA National Teach of the Year (2018), Golf Digest Top 50 and Golf Magazine Top 100 instructor James Sieckmann. Coach Siekmann is one of the top short game coaches in the world, having worked with some of the best players at both the professional, amateur and junior level.   He uses a holistic approach to instruction organizing every session into block, random and competitive practice, with a major emphasis on games and competing.  All of this is done to be more efficient and disciplined when practicing or warming up.  Over two days our juniors were able to glean invaluable scoring and mental coaching that will be extremely beneficial both in their short and long-term development. 

Success On The Course Continues to Bring Back Junior Golfers and Build Excitement For The Future

As mentioned previously, this was a big year for our program, and one of our biggest achievements was at the Ohio Junior.   In 2018, we had one junior from Scioto play in the Ohio Junior Championship.  In 2019 and 2020 we again only had one junior representing Scioto in this prestigious event.  Over the last five years, much preparation and work has been done to not only increase the overall level of junior play, but to have more Scioto juniors playing competitive golf in Ohio. This year we were proud to say we had seven Scioto Junior Team members competing in the Ohio Junior at Ashland Golf Club with Mikey Pagnotto finishing 7th with rounds of 75, 71, 70.   In addition our junior team had one female golfer compete in the Ohio Girls Junior Championship.

The Junior Club Championship was extremely competitive this year with 21 juniors competing. Congratulations to Rocco Humphreys and Eva Emerson on winning the overall Junior Club Championship. In addition congratulations to Case Chaney on winning the 11 and under age group along with Max Humphreys on wining the 12-14 age group. Its hard to believe but in 2018 our junior club championship was cancelled due to lack of competitive junior golfers. Our program has certainly come a long way since this time. We are proud to say we had 8 juniors, the most ever competing in the 11 and under age group. The future for junior golf at Scioto is very bright.

On July 16th Scioto hosted the traditional interclub with Oakmont, Canterbury and Kahkwa for our longest standing junior interclub that has been played for many decades. Many of our current members played in this event when they were growing up. The Scioto Junior Team came out victorious for the 2nd year in a row. Prior to these victories Scioto had not won this Tournament in more than 15 years. This is another great example of how far our junior program has grown over the past five years.

On July 25th the Scioto Junior Team had the opportunity to travel and play the championship South course at NCR Country Club in the Inaugural Buckeye Battle.  This was the first Junior Ryder Cup held between Scioto and NCR and will be an annual event in future seasons.  Both team Scioto and NCR had 12 juniors competing in the tournament which consisted of three nine-hole matches. Scioto came out victoriously, clinching 5 points in singles matches for an 11 to 5 victory.  Finally, on August 10th Scioto had two junior teams represent the club in the PGA Junior League Section Championship at Locust Hills.  This event was a great opportunity for our JV and Rising Star program’s to get some competitive tournament experience as PGA Junior League offers a fun team based environment for young golfers to grow their game.   We had 16 juniors playing in the 17u and 13u Celebration Divisions with our 17u team finishing runner up and our 13u team winning the championship in the celebration division. 

This year many of our junior golfers had great success in high school tournaments with Will Mangas and Mikey Pagnotto qualifying for the state tournament, Will as an individual from Upper Arlington and Mikey leading St. Charles as a team. This year the DI OHSAA State High School tournament was held on October 12-13th on the North Course at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio.  Will Mangas played very well shooting rounds of 73-72 to earn First Team All-State Honors.  Mikey Pagnotto and St Charles fought very hard over the final nine holes coming from 15 shots back to finish runner up and only two behind Dublin Jerome. Mikey had a very solid second round with a three under par 69 earning Second Team All-State Honors. Additionally, Eva Emerson was medalist at the Sectional Tournament and finished Top 10 at the District Tournament earning 3rd Team All-District and First Team All-Conference. Jack Woods was named Central Buckeye League All-Conference First Team. Mitchell Corbin was named honorable mention for All-District Team and 1st Team All-OCC.

Finally, we are very proud to announce that senior Mikey Pagnotto formally committed to play college golf at The Ohio State University.  This is a huge milestone not only for Mikey but for the junior golf program at Scioto.  He is a great example that trust, hard work, and commitment to the process leads to long term success.  Mikey Becomes the seventh Buckeye from Scioto joining Alfred Sargent, Jack Nicklaus, Robin Obetz, Alex Redfield, Tanner Murphy, and Bo Hoag.       

Ross Cup With Birmingham and Scioto Country Club Helps To Build Great Memories and Experiences for Junior Golfers which Continues to Grow The Game and Builds Excitement For The Future.

To cap off the year, on October 24th through the 26th, the Scioto Junior Team hosted The Country Club of Birmingham for the third rendition of the Ross Cup Junior Matches.  It was an unbelievable weekend with a lot of team camaraderie and memories made. In addition to many competitive matches and fun on the golf course; the event included a coat and tie dinner, Muirfield Village Golf Club tour and much fun at the family center. Birmingham prevailed just edging out Team Scioto 27.5 to 25.5 to retain the Ross Cup, however this year's event demonstrated just how far the Scioto junior team has grown over the past two years.  In 2023, Birmingham won 25-15 and in the spring of 2024, they won again by double digits.  This year, Scioto was a few missed putts away from beating a very strong Birmingham team.  Several of their players are ranked within the top 200 of junior golf scoreboard and will be playing DI college golf over the next few years.  Many great memories were made this weekend showing just how far Scioto has come and the bright future ahead for our team!    
 

JUNIOR GOLF PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

Scioto Competitive Team Programming  
Varsity Team (Ages 13+) 
Holistic team coaching model for competitive junior golfers ages 13 and up playing a highly competitive junior golf tournament schedule, middle school golf, high school golf and those aspiring to play at the collegiate level.  Includes local and non local tournaments. 
Junior Varsity Team (Ages 8–12) 
Holistic team coaching model for competitive junior golfers ages 8-12 playing in US Kids/SOPGA tournaments along with PGA Junior League.. 

Recreational and Developmental Programs 
Spring, Summer, and Fall Clinics (Ages 6-15) 
Intended for beginners and avid juniors to provide instruction in a fun games based learning environment .   
 Lily Pod (Ages 7–10)  
Designed for younger players interested in playing organized tournament golf – US Kids and PGA Junior League. 
Rising Stars (Ages 11–15)  
Designed for beginning and intermediate junior golfers interested in competitive golf with an introduction to PGA Junior League, SOPGA and US Kids Tournaments  

74 Drive, Chip & Putt Entries 
74 Juniors participated in the 5th Scioto Drive, Chip & Putt Training Day
The Augusta National Drive, Chip and Putt Task force continues to use our training day as a template/model for The PGA of America and 20,000 plus PGA Professionals to follow. 
5 Drive, Chip & Putt Local Qualifiers
1 Drive, Chip & Putt Regional Finalist
20+ Juniors participating in US Kids tournaments
15+ SOPGA and GolfWeek Jr. Tour participants
21 Competitive Scioto Junior Team Members
40+ Lily Pod, Rising Stars playing Wilson Road weekly with team practices at Scioto during the week
Continued partnership with Sports Ohio par 3 course with elevated Tuesday play days for Lily Pod, Rising Stars and Scioto JV Team
90+ Beginners participating 
40+ US Kids Pins earned
3 US Kids World Championship participants representing SCC
4 US Kids Ohio State Invitational participants representing SCC
2025 US Kids State Invitational Runner-Up Boys 11 – William Yoder
8 Ohio Junior participants – record number from Scioto Country Club
21 Jr. Club Championship participants
Mikey Pagnotto formally commits to play college golf at The Ohio State University
35 PROGRAM VICTORIES
12 Ranked Juniors in 2025 – 10 in 2024 – 9 in 2023 – 9 in 2022 – 7 in 2021 – 1 in 2020
2 Golfweek Regional Tour Victories – Mikey Pagnotto and Eva Emerson
9 SOPGA Tour Victories – Eva Emerson (4), Christian Yoder (3) and William Yoder (2)
1 SOPGA Jr Team Member and 2 Team Ohio Members
7 Pink Head Covers Awarded  
Scioto Junior Team Golf Workouts – 10 juniors worked out with Coach Yoder, Coach Jared and Coach David Gattshall, TPI
Dr Todd Kays, mental coach, Alex Huang, COO Decade golf and Ohio Golf Association rules seminars
3rd Annual Ross Cup Junior Matches in October featuring Ryder Cup style matches between Scioto CC and The Country Club of Birmingham. 20 Juniors and families from the Birmingham Junior Team traveled to compete against the Scioto Junior Team at Scioto Country Club. Team Birmingham was crowned champion. Team Birmingham 27.5 – Team Scioto 25.5
Scioto Junior Team was crowned the champion of the Inaugural Buckeye Battle with NCR Country Club consisting of Ryder Cup style matches between the Scioto Jr Team and NCR – Team Scioto 11 – Team NCR 5
4 Scioto PGA Junior League developmental teams consisting of 48 total PGA Junior League players
16 Scioto juniors participated as PGA Junior League All-Stars in SOPGA Section Championship
Scioto 13U PGA Junior team won SOPGA Section Championship Celebration Division and Scioto PGA Junior League 17u team finished 2nd place in Championship Division.
Coach Yoder named captain of the Southern Ohio PGA Junior team for the Junior Ohio Cup Matches – 2025 and 2024 – captain PGA Jr League Team Ohio
Coach Yoder named vice captain of USGA Team Ohio
Coach Yoder – SOPGA Youth Player Development Award
Coach Yoder – US Kids Master Top 50 Kids Coach
Coach Yoder – GRAA Top 100 Growth of The Game Teaching Professional
Coach Yoder – PGA Jr League GameChanger