Video: First Tee Program Comes to Noxubee County

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MACON, Miss. (WCBI) – Golf is a game most of us can enjoy for a lifetime.

Walking the course can help your waistline and hitting the ball is good for coordination.

In January,  Noxubee County, Macon and the local schools will begin their involvement with the First Tee Program.

It’s a national initiative aimed at teaching sportsmanship, honor and a healthy love of the game.

First Tee is a nationwide effort.

It’s sponsored by the PGA, LPGA, Shell and Johnson and Johnson.

It’s aimed at teaching children, as young as 5, how to golf, and so much more.

Parks Director Gary Naylor breaks it down for us, ” First of all, we take them in the classroom, and that curriculum for that day, might be responsibility or it could be integrity and we seamlessly take it to the golf course, where we reinforce what we just did in the classroom.”

Noxubee County is one of the first places in Mississippi to try First Tee.

Gary thinks it’s a perfect fit.

He explains, “We don’t have that village, that you could say a long time ago that helped you raise a kid, but if you start young, it’s proven fact, that whatever is instilled in them young will also last them all the way through life. ”

And it will be affordable, parents will only need to come up with 25 dollars for uniforms, and if they can’t, there is help available.

Gary says, “We’re going to provide the clubs and the balls and the scoring books and the books they have to study for the curriculum that goes along with it.”

Golf is a relatively new sport at Noxubee County High, but it’s already paying off.

According to Gary, ” Talked to a coach from Alcorn last week, and he asked me if we had any golf players. And I said, sure we do. And he said, ‘ Do we have any seniors?’ We didn’t have any seniors, but soon as you get some, we’d like to give them a scholarship, whether they are great players or good players, they want them and its just another avenue. If a kid stays in school, he’s going to make it and if he can stay in school and get a scholarship, where there goes your social status straight up the ladder.”

And starting in the January, some very young children can take that first step.

To find out more, contact Gary Naylor with the Noxubee County Parks Department at (662) 251-5838.