Teacher of the Year Haverland, Newsome and Tomash Win Player Development Award-
Butch Haverland Wins Teacher of the Year
Riverside, Iowa – Butch Haverland of Palmer Hills Golf Course has been named the 2024 Teacher of the Year by the Iowa PGA. This honor is based on a professional’s entire record of achievements over their career. The award is determined based on the nominee’s overall impact in teaching at the nominee’s facility, unusual, innovative, or special teaching programs initiated or implemented, instructional articles, videos or publications written or produced, list of outstanding golfers whom the nominee has instructed, involvement in junior golf activities and in the community and innovative contributions.
When asked on what this means to win this award Haverland responded with, “It’s always been a goal, but to finally attain it is rewarding. It’s something I’ve thought about for some time and always thought, maybe one day I’ll get there. There are so many great teachers of golf, especially in the Iowa Section, and to be recognized is something special.”
This game is so hard and yet so rewarding. Each day you work with students you learn more about this game. It never ends. Each year, I see or hear about a new aspect to the game. A new driver swing, a new putting grip, a new chip shot approach. But what I’ve learned most is to keep it simple and fun for the student. Sometimes the old way is still the best.
I try to always tell my students they are good golfers. Most are better than they believe and need to hear this. Giving students confidence is very important. Give them goals and write them out. Tell them where they need to be in a month or by the end of summer. Of all the fundamentals, alignment I feel is the most important. It’s hard to get the student to see it properly and understand how important it really is. Playing the game relaxed is hard. Getting the student to relax is even harder. Teach slowly and eloquently. Make the students tell you what they are thinking. This helps in understanding how they think about the game. Golfers think putting is easy when actually it’s the hardest and having patience in the game is the biggest ingredient.
Haverland has recently completed his 10th season as a PGA Junior League Coach with over 80 different players. Presently coaching (22) different golf clinics for ladies and men all sold out with a total of over 110 attendees. Haverland coaches 6-8 hours per day, all ages. He most recently retired from Coaching Men’s Golf at Black Hawk College for the past 5 years. He is currently sitting on the board for the 20th year of Big Brothers Big Sisters Putt-Around committee. This is a Putt-Putt event and a major fundraiser to help fund matches. We average 1300+ players, over 100+ matches, raise over $85,000 net for the week in February. The total amount of donations is well over $1.4 million for its history.
Jon Waddell, PGA Head Golf Professional at Palmer Hills Golf Course, “Butch has had a tremendous impact on many, many golf games in the Quad Cities and surrounding areas. Students young and old and in between come to Palmer Hills to work with him. It’s a pleasure to watch him work and interact with his students. Butch’s students get his full attention during and after their lesson. He does a tremendous job of communicating with them, helping them set goals, and monitoring progress. He is constantly working on his methods of teaching and finding creative ways to communicate with his students. He is very deserving of this award!”
Haverland won Player Development in 2018 and 2021. He was also the Honorary Captain of this years Iowa PGA Cup Matches team.
Thank you for the game,
Michael “Butch” Haverland
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Butch Haverland as our 2024 Teacher of the Year.
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Sherry Newsome Wins Youth Player Development Award
Sherry Newsome of Indian Creek Country Club has been named the 2024 Iowa PGA Youth Player Development honoree. This honor is based on the Professional’s entire record, with emphasis placed on his/her performance and achievements over the past two years. The honoree should also promote junior golf throughout the Section.
When asked what this means to win this award Newsome responded with “From the day I began my golf career at Indian Creek, my goal and passion were to develop a credible junior program that brought value to the student, their family, golf course and community. My reward has always been the junior’s success, enjoyment and learning experience. Winning this award demonstrates that the passion, long hours and sacrifice I have given these past 15 years has made a difference and it fuels my passion to continue to enhance the junior program to positively affect the lives of those juniors I am privileged to serve.”
Newsome began her career in the golf industry at Indian Creek Country Club in Nevada in 2008 when she was hired as the General Manager/Director of Golf. She was not affiliated with the PGA at the time she was hired. One of her goals quickly became to work toward PGA certification and another goal was to begin a junior program at the facility. She entered the PGA/PGM program in 2011 after passing the PAT that spring. Once she was involved in the PGA, she began hosting the Iowa PGA Junior Tour, Pee Wee Tour, and Drive, Chip and Putt events. Indian Creek has hosted these events every year since 2011. Indian Creek has had 1-2 teams participating in the PGA Junior League since it was available in our area. Prior to that, juniors from Indian Creek played in events with juniors from Veenker, Ames Golf and Marshalltown in our own Junior Golf League.
She has encouraged and assisted many of the juniors from Indian Creek to become involved in the Iowa PGA Junior and Pee Wee Tours as well as the US Kids, Hurricane and AJGA tours. She has been instrumental in helping many juniors continue their golf careers at the college and have been an Assistant Coach at Grandview University for 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 seasons. She has not, to date, been a member of a Junior Golf Committee, although she would very much be a willing participant on a committee if given the opportunity.
Her passion has and always will be junior golf. She is a PGA Coach certified, TPI Golf II and Junior Golf II Certified, US Kids Golf Certified and Color Path Golf certified. All these educational opportunities have assisted her in developing exceptional Junior Programming. She began the junior program at Indian Creek Country Club in 2009 with about 25 juniors participating. Each year we have grown the number of juniors until we have reached 75+ participants each year for the past 6-7 years. With 85 participants in 2023 and 96 participants in 2024 which has exceeded what she ever envisioned it would be.
Newsome developed 4 levels of junior programming –Pee Wee 3–6-year-olds, Junior Development 7–13-year-olds, Junior Team (PGA Junior League) 8-13, year olds and an Advanced League for 14–18-year-olds. All these programs are designed to create a fun learning environment. In 2024, we began using the Op36 program, which has been a great addition to our existing programming. In addition to the above programs, she has served 15+ juniors in private lessons each summer. Over the years, the junior program has served kids from not only the Nevada community, but also from surrounding communities (Ames, Gilbert, Huxley, State Center, Colo, Maxell, Boone and Story City). During the off season, October – March, she has an indoor individual junior program which has served up to 40 juniors. Included in this program are 1:1 golf lessons and small group speed and fitness training. This year, she will be expanding the off season to include small group Op36 programs for juniors 9 years and younger.
She has networked with the PGA Professionals in the Story, Marshall and Polk Counties since becoming involved with the PGA in 2009. We have worked together to ensure juniors in the area have many and varied golf opportunities. She has learned a lot from these Professionals and believes she has inspired them in their work as well. She recently has mentored a PGA Level I Apprentice, assisting him through his portfolio and assuring he has the support he needs.
During her years at Indian Creek, we have seen steady growth in Family Memberships fostered mainly by our youth programming and promotion of families playing together. Over the years, she has developed a popular and well attended Tournament Series for adults and juniors serving both the Nevada and surrounding community golf population. She provides clinics and other fun opportunities for women and families to promote golf to families and as a lifetime activity.
In everything she does and offers, she fosters a love for the game while teaching golf skills, etiquette, the history of the game and how it applies to life. The programs she offers and her love for the game is widely known in Nevada and the surrounding communities.
This is Newsomes’ first Iowa PGA Section award.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Sherry Newsome as our 2024 Youth Player Development Award recipient.
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Kari Tomash Wins Player Development Award
Kari Tomash of Cedar Rapids Country Club has been named the 2024 Iowa PGA Player Development honoree. The Player Development Award is designed to recognize a PGA Professional for extraordinary and exemplary contributions and achievements in the area of player development. This award considers the PGA Professional’s growth of the game leadership commitment at the Section and National levels and the impact made at their facility.
When asked on what this means to win this award Tomash responded with, “Being named the 2024 Iowa PGA Player Development Award Honoree is an extreme honor. One of the things I cherish most about my job is the relationships I get to create with students and being part of their golf journey.”
As a young golf professional, she was very fortunate to be mentored by and learn from many great professionals from all over the country. After 26 years in the golf business, it has been very rewarding to her to be able to pay it forward in the form of mentoring and advising the newest batch of young professionals.
She has served on numerous player development committees in the different PGA sections she has worked in, along with being a member of several panel discussions on growing the game. Tomash was a panel presenter at the Assistant’s Teaching and Coaching Summit this year and has helped guide numerous professionals in their PGA education and road to becoming a Class A member.
As the Academy Director at Cedar Rapids Country Club, she is responsible for all instructional programs. She runs their entire Junior Program which is made up of two eight-week Op36 and Little Birdie sessions that run in the Spring and Fall. They offer a yearlong Girls Golf program that includes socials and golf instruction. During the summer she was captain and coaches CRCC’s PGA Jr League Team that had 17 members this year and she also runs and coaches the Highschool Training Program that runs on Friday mornings during the summer. Junior golf numbers have increased almost 200% since she took over the program 3 years ago. She believes the junior golf program at CRCC is the best in the state not only for what they offer juniors on site but for the number of juniors that are competing outside of the club on their high school teams, Iowa Junior Tour, Hurricane Tour and AJGA events.
One of her other main responsibilities is running the Ladies’ Golf Program. On the instructional side they offer many different opportunities for the women to work on their games no matter ability. CRCC’s programs include Spring Training, Get Golf Ready, Performance Training and Happy Hour Clinics. She is the developer and head instructor in all ladies’ programming. They have seen their ladies’ numbers increase tremendously during the past 6 years.
In their Junior Golf Program they progress from Little Birdies, to Op36 and then to Highschool Training. Intermixed with those are PGA Junior League and Girls Golf. She has seen young girls start with coming to a few Girls Golf socials and then that turns into them signing up for OP36. Most of her PGA Junior League Golfers come from their OP36 program. Her belief in the longevity of a club like CRCC is largely based on its youth program and growing the game at a young age. She measures such things as player retention and rounds played by looking at the daily records of rounds, numbers and who is playing, as well as the numbers on OP36 match days and family days. They have seen a huge growth in their Tuesday evening ladies’ golf which has led to an increase in food and beverage for those evenings. She works closely with other departments so they will be prepared for the demand. CRCC also does annual member surveys that allow them to measure how they are doing and if the members are satisfied with the programming.
In all their CRCC Academy programming, the goal is to create a pathway for golfers to improve and grow their golf game. For some, growth is measured by simply hitting a few more solid shots, some just want to be able to have play well enough to have fun with their spouse and others are looking to be the best they can be and to compete.
During her time as a member of the Wisconsin PGA, she served on both the Player Development and Junior Golf Committee. She currently serves on the Scholarship Committee in the Iowa Section. She was also a member of the panel discussion during the 2023 Iowa Teaching and Coaching Summit, as well as the 2024 Assistants Teaching and Coaching Summit.
Luke Donah, PGA Head Golf Professional at Cedar Rapids Country Club, “One example that displays Kari’s significant contributions to Player Development, is the success of the Washington (CR) High School Girls Golf Team over the past several seasons. Having introduced over 80% of the starting lineup to the game at a young age, Kari’s intentional and developmentally sound instructional programs have aided the young ladies to back-to-back runner up finishes at the 4A State High School Championships. What I consider to be an even bigger success than State Meet Results, is the fact that the young ladies who came up through Kari’s programming now assist her with the execution of programming for the next generation of Cedar Rapids Country Club golfers. Kari not only develops new golfers, but aids in their progression as mature, responsible, and caring individuals to be around.”
Molly Altorfer, Associate Athletic Director Mount Mercy University has this nice comment to say about Tomash, “We are incredibly lucky that Kari came to Cedar Rapids Country Club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2019. At that time, our junior golf program was geared mainly for competition-level male junior golfers. Kari reimagined what a comprehensive golf teaching program could look like for young boys and girls, women, casual golfers, and competitive golfers! She is responsible for bringing PGA Junior League to our Club, re-energizing junior golf at Cedar Rapids CC, while successfully recruiting additional golfers to all levels of instruction.”
Tomash won Youth Player Development award in 2022.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Kari Tomash as our 2024 Player Development Award.
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