Atchison Wins Teacher of the Year
Riverside, Iowa – Mark Atchison of Des Moines Golf & Country Club has been named the 2022 Teacher of the Year by the Iowa PGA. This honor is based on a professionl'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 intiated or implemented, instructional articles, videos or publications written or produced, list of outstanding golers 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 Atchison responded with, "Though we do not do what we do for the accolades, I am extremely humbled by and proud of this achievement. As I have said before, though I do not pretend to know everything there is to know about the golf swing or how to teach it, all I do know is that I will strive to improve at both each and every day. With that said, having now had the honor of earning this award for a second time, I take comfort in knowing I must be on the right path."
Having had the honor of being named the Iowa Section Teacher of the Year in 2019, Mark stands by the belief that he will never know everything there is to know about the golf swing nor how to teach it, so he strives to better himself at both, every single day.
As the son of two career educators, Mark credits his passion for learning and teaching to his parents, Gary and Gayle. For his passion for the game of golf, he credits his Grandpa Charlie who introduced him to the game at the age of five. And for his successes as a golf instructor, Mark credits the many mentors who have influenced him over the years who include former ISU Women’s Golf Coach Julie Manning, fellow Iowa Section members Mark Egly, John Ward (who gave Mark his first official golf lesson when he was in 9 th grade), Chris Winkel, and the 2011 PGA National Teacher of the Year, Mike Malaska.
Since arriving at Des Moines Golf in the fall of 2018, be it private lessons, adult group instruction, or their various junior golf programs, Mark has steadily increased the hours of instruction he has given each season.
In his first full season at DMG in 2019, in addition to private instruction, Mark began offering both weekly Adult and Junior Clinics, as well as a stand-alone 3-week long Short Game Academy, that began the first week of each month throughout the season.
Having gotten off to his best start as a professional to date, though this season was cut short due to an unfortunate injury that fall, Mark gave a little over 700 individual lessons and nearly 850 total hours of instruction.
Heading into 2020 fully healed and ready to pick up where he had left off, Mother Nature decided to throw everyone a curveball with the onset of Covid-19. Fearing people would be reluctant to pursue in- person instruction, Atchison’s concerns were quickly put to rest as the Iowa PGA and Iowa Golf Association teamed up to help clear the way for us to continue playing golf and therefore golf instruction, as golf became one of the few activities many were still able to participate in.
Although all adult group instruction was put on hold for the remainder of the season at Des Moines Golf, following CDC protocols, the club felt it was important to continue as planned with their newly launched season-long Operation 36 Junior Golf Program as well as their 5-week long summer program, “which
turned out to be good for all of us”, said Atchison.
As a result, Mark’s individual lessons increased by nearly 20% from 2019, resulting in nearly 850 individual lessons and just shy of 1100 total hours of instruction including Junior Golf. Thinking his schedule could not get any fuller, due to the continued growth of their Operation 36 program and the increased demand for private lessons from the previous year, Mark once again increased his overall hours of instruction in 2021 by roughly 15% having given 950 individual lessons and nearly 1200 total hours of instruction.
In June of 2021, after remodeling their golf shop, Des Moines Golf unveiled two Trackman Simulators. Losing roughly 100 lessons per year due to foul weather and with people becoming more comfortable with indoor interactions again, being able to teach indoors year-round has since proven to be a huge bonus for Mark and the rest of their teaching staff.
In fact, though they did have a temporary indoor teaching space available previously, having averaged giving less than 125 total lessons January through March in each of his previous three seasons, Atchison gave a total of 260 lessons in those same three months to start the 2022 season which has not let up since.
As a result, though he did help with Operation 36 this spring and will do so again in the fall, having averaged nearly 500 hours of combine private and junior golf instruction June 1st through August 31st the previous two seasons, Mark gave the reigns of the program to Kevin Trobaugh and Andrew Reedy
for the summer and ended the same 3-month stretch this season giving just shy of 500 hours of private instruction.
Matching the trajectory of the last few seasons, Mark will once again eclipse his numbers from last season and is on pace to give 1150 individual lessons and a total of 1250 total hours of instruction. As mentioned before, in 2020, with the help of his Teaching Assistant, Kevin Trobaugh, Mark headed the facility’s adoption of the Operation 36 Junior Golf Program, having created four 8-week long semesters that run through the entire year.
Having navigated the pandemic their first year, as they hit the midway point of the 2022 OP36 season they have created a total of 152 new golfers based on the program’s parameters that a new golfer is created when a given participant can score even par 36 or better from 25 yards away from the hole. With their program’s newfound success, fellow DMG PGA Golf Professionals Don Winker and Janet Rooney launched a Women’s Operation 36 program in the spring of 2021 which has seen comparable growth.
With an extremely large and active membership increasingly interested in improving their games, most of Atchison’s instruction is focused on members of the club, with 10% of his students being non- members. Of the 150-160 students Atchison works with on an annual basis, he sees a 50/50 split between males and females, with 70-80% of those being adults and the rest juniors.
As for the professional teaching staff at Des Moines Golf, though informal, they meet regularly throughout the season for impromptu brainstorming/teacher training sessions which includes PGA Director of Golf Scott Howe, PGA Head Professionals Don Winker and Janet Rooney, PGA Teaching Professional Kevin
Trobaugh and PGA Associate Andrew Reedy in addition to their many Golf Shop Assistants and Interns.
During these sessions they discuss specific concerns or issues they might be having with various students, training aids and drills they are having success with, as well as any new ideas they may have come across be it online, in discussion with other instructors, or through their own teaching or while working on their own games so they can continue to grow and improve as a group.
Matt Ruehling, PGA General Manager of the Des Moines Golf & Country Club, “Mark has done a fantastic job as a teacher at DMGCC. Our members rave about his teaching ability, and he takes pride in making our members better.”
Atchison has won Teacher of the Year in 2019.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Mark Atchison as our 2022 Teacher of the Year.
Bidney Wins Youth Player Development Award
Sarah Bidney of Wakonda Club has been named the 2022 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 thoughout the Section.
When asked on what this means to win this award Bidney responded with, “I am truly humbled to receive this award for my work with junior golfers. Juniors are such a fun, lively, creative, and curious group of golfers to work with! It is so rewarding to see their development over the years – to see their potential develop into life long enjoyment of the game – so awesome! To know my teaching and coaching is worthy of this award is again very humbling and I am very thankful for this honor.”
Bidney is in her second term serving on the Board of Iowa Section, with both terms spent as the co-chair of the Junior Golf Committee. Alongside Iowa PGA’s Assistant Executive Director/Junior Golf Director Tess Goudy they have reached every goal they set at the beginning of their planning periods. This has been a wonderful experience that has produced two online instructional webinars during 2021 for our Iowa Junior Tour Members. She was able to secure John Dunigan, a PGA Master Professional, Golf Digest Top 50 Teacher, 4-time Philly PGA Teacher of the Year for our first ever and it was awesome. For the second event she was able to secure Dr. Rick Jensen who has trained numerous PGA and LPGA Tour Professional’s to help our juniors better understand what is happening when they a rut or feel they have done “mental”. They also conducted a Golf Fun Day at Jester Park last season that the kids truly enjoyed this fun, low-pressure event. This season two seminars with college coaches were conducted for our Iowa PGA Junior Tour Members to learn more about collegiate golf and recruitment.
When the 2022 season wraps up she will have administered 26 junior tournaments at Wakonda Club. Along with the 26 events they also have on-course play for juniors on Thursday mornings. They are very fortunate that Wakonda dedicates Thursday mornings from 8-1am for junior only play and has done so for years! A typical Thursday morning this summer would have 8-10 high school prep or high school players tee off. 20-30 Operation 36 event participants playing 9 holes and 40-60 Birdie Bomber/Sport Camp kids playing 3-4 holes. Their largest morning had almost 100 juniors playing! To date they have had 975 players on the course in programs – not including practice outside of class. Bidney anticipates another 120 this Fall. On course play is so incredibly important to the growth of the game and getting juniors the on-course experience, they need to move on to the Iowa PGA Junior Tour and high school/college. She is very proud she can get these juniors out on the course as much as they do and appreciate Wakonda's willingness to dedicate chunks of time each week to on course junior play!
For the first time in her career, she was able to hire a Teaching Intern for the summer. This had been a goal of hers for several years now and it was wonderful to have it come to life. She was very fortunate to be able to hire Nicolaus Latcham, a 4th year student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln in the PGA Golf Management program-he will graduate this December as a Class A member of the PGA. Nicolaus was also a student of hers since the age of 12. He was also the 2018 Charlie Burkhart Scholarship recipient. Nicolaus and her have kept in close contact over his years at Nebraska, discussing his internship options and teaching related questions. When Wakonda approved the hire of an intern she knew Nicolaus was someone who would be perfect. Truly he was – eager to learn and was very hard working, pleasant, fit in well with the membership, and if Bidney could hire him for an entire season she would do so in a heartbeat. She was also able to hire Paige Hoffmann, former Valley High School player/Girls Individual State Champ and Team State Champ. She also took short game lessons from Bidney this year as well as helped with junior programs. Paige was tremendous as well.
Bidney puts a lot of what she does out on social media, not only to encourage and congratulate the students in her programs, but she also knows other Professionals, primarily those in the Operation 36 network, look to her outlets for ideas and ways to congratulate their own students. She has shared her Operation-36 experience with many Professionals around the country who called prior to signing up as a coach.
Earlier this year Bidney was asked to be on a panel for the Iowa Assistant's Teaching and Coaching Summit on March 21 at Blue Top Ridge. It was great fun to meet with the Assistants and share her experiences teaching and coaching so far and answer their questions! Brian Johnson was also on the panel.
She had one of the best compliments this season as a Wakonda member attended a member-guest in Texas. He was so excited and proud to tell her he had a Professional down there seek him out to tell him she knew her through Operation 36 and other instructional education events and that she was one of the best. What a compliment!
She is a constant learner and attends many online seminars and in-person seminars, positively representing Wakonda and the Iowa Section each and every time. She believes she’s a good ambassador for the game and our section through continuous improvement as a coach – bringing the best technology and expertise to the lesson tee. She was an early adapter to SportsBox AI – an amazing 3D swing analysis tool. Sherry Newsome came down for a lesson this season to help her with her own game as well as chat instruction and BioSwing Dynamics – something they are both trained in. Bidney’s work on the Iowa Board has positively promoted the game.
Overall, Sarah has created a Junior Golf Academy with programs for ages 3 to graduating senior. These programs are based on fundamentals of the game and are developmentally appropriate for each child based on their age, ability, and maturity. They have a lot of fun and juniors are in an environment that promotes learning, is encouraging, and they will succeed with enough time and space given to develop the skills needed to play this wonderful game. The best thing Bidney is doing is to promote the game of golf and to grow the game of golf one student at a time.
Bidney has won Teacher of the Year in 2010, 2012 and 2015 and Youth Player Development in 2015 and 2020.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Sarah Bidney as our 2022 Youth Player Development Award recipient.
Johnson Wins Player Development Award
Brian Johnson of Elmcrest Country Club has been named the 2022 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 groth 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 Johnson responded with, “It is a special award. One of the passions I have in my roll at Elmcrest Country Club is to offer new opportunities and experiences that lead to game improvement and game enjoyment. Golfers play the game for many different reasons so whether it is seeing a player take a stronger liking to the game or someone who reaches their personal goals, it is all rewarding. Thank you to those who submitted a nomination and to the committee for their selection!”
The Elmcrest Junior Golf Academy consisted of 12-weeks of instructional clinics along with six Friday Junior Golf League events throughout summer and fall seasons. The EJGA promotes learning the on-course aspects of the game at a young age while playing in a team format. 2022 consisted of juniors ages 6-13 and totaled 67 participants.
Tee It Up (High School Playing Series) is an 8-week series made up of supervised practice followed by 9-holes of playing with the pro. This series was designed for high school golfers with the primary focus on bringing juniors together to play with one another as well as play with a PGA Professional. 2022 consisted of juniors ages 14-18 and totaled 16 participants.
Play To Compete (High School/College Advanced Series) is a first-year program specifically geared towards the more series high school or college player who is competitively involved in the game. The priority of this 9-week program was on-course coaching in a game-like environment. A total of four juniors were selected for this pioneer program in 2022.
PGA Junior League 13U Team: Captained Team ECC in 2022. This program consisted of 7-weeks of on-course team coaching sessions along with five competitions within the CR/Iowa City League. PGA JLG All-Star 13U Team: Captained the CR/Iowa City East PGA JLG 13U All-Star team, which won the 2022 Iowa Section Championship.
Get Golf Ready Fore Women Spring Instructional Series is a 5-week intro to golf instructional program which offered three classes weekly which in 2022 totaled 37 participants. Drive, Chip, & Putt Local Qualifier Elmcrest Country Club was a host to a private local qualifier in 2022 which a total of 23 juniors participated.
Johnson was a volunteer instructor for the 2022 virtual golf pilot program of the National Disabled Veterans Golf Clinic. Johnson was a junior golf guest speaker for the 2022 Iowa PGA Associates Teaching & Coaching Summit. He was an instructor for the 2022 Iowa PGA Junior Golf Academy. He was part of the PGA.Coach guest panel speaker for the 2021 Iowa PGA Fall Meeting.
This is Johnson’s first Iowa PGA Award.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Brian Johnson as our 2022 Player Development Award.
Follow the Iowa PGA
For more information and schedule updates, fans can follow the Iowa PGA on Facebook (facebook.com/Iowapga), Twitter (@iowapga) and YouTube (youtube.com/iowapga). Fans can also get a behind the scenes look on Instagram (@iowapga).Atchison Wins Teacher of the Year
Riverside, Iowa – Mark Atchison of Des Moines Golf & Country Club has been named the 2022 Teacher of the Year by the Iowa PGA. This honor is based on a professionl'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 intiated or implemented, instructional articles, videos or publications written or produced, list of outstanding golers 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 Atchison responded with, "Though we do not do what we do for the accolades, I am extremely humbled by and proud of this achievement. As I have said before, though I do not pretend to know everything there is to know about the golf swing or how to teach it, all I do know is that I will strive to improve at both each and every day. With that said, having now had the honor of earning this award for a second time, I take comfort in knowing I must be on the right path."
Having had the honor of being named the Iowa Section Teacher of the Year in 2019, Mark stands by the belief that he will never know everything there is to know about the golf swing nor how to teach it, so he strives to better himself at both, every single day.
As the son of two career educators, Mark credits his passion for learning and teaching to his parents, Gary and Gayle. For his passion for the game of golf, he credits his Grandpa Charlie who introduced him to the game at the age of five. And for his successes as a golf instructor, Mark credits the many mentors who have influenced him over the years who include former ISU Women’s Golf Coach Julie Manning, fellow Iowa Section members Mark Egly, John Ward (who gave Mark his first official golf lesson when he was in 9 th grade), Chris Winkel, and the 2011 PGA National Teacher of the Year, Mike Malaska.
Since arriving at Des Moines Golf in the fall of 2018, be it private lessons, adult group instruction, or their various junior golf programs, Mark has steadily increased the hours of instruction he has given each season.
In his first full season at DMG in 2019, in addition to private instruction, Mark began offering both weekly Adult and Junior Clinics, as well as a stand-alone 3-week long Short Game Academy, that began the first week of each month throughout the season.
Having gotten off to his best start as a professional to date, though this season was cut short due to an unfortunate injury that fall, Mark gave a little over 700 individual lessons and nearly 850 total hours of instruction.
Heading into 2020 fully healed and ready to pick up where he had left off, Mother Nature decided to throw everyone a curveball with the onset of Covid-19. Fearing people would be reluctant to pursue in- person instruction, Atchison’s concerns were quickly put to rest as the Iowa PGA and Iowa Golf Association teamed up to help clear the way for us to continue playing golf and therefore golf instruction, as golf became one of the few activities many were still able to participate in.
Although all adult group instruction was put on hold for the remainder of the season at Des Moines Golf, following CDC protocols, the club felt it was important to continue as planned with their newly launched season-long Operation 36 Junior Golf Program as well as their 5-week long summer program, “which
turned out to be good for all of us”, said Atchison.
As a result, Mark’s individual lessons increased by nearly 20% from 2019, resulting in nearly 850 individual lessons and just shy of 1100 total hours of instruction including Junior Golf. Thinking his schedule could not get any fuller, due to the continued growth of their Operation 36 program and the increased demand for private lessons from the previous year, Mark once again increased his overall hours of instruction in 2021 by roughly 15% having given 950 individual lessons and nearly 1200 total hours of instruction.
In June of 2021, after remodeling their golf shop, Des Moines Golf unveiled two Trackman Simulators. Losing roughly 100 lessons per year due to foul weather and with people becoming more comfortable with indoor interactions again, being able to teach indoors year-round has since proven to be a huge bonus for Mark and the rest of their teaching staff.
In fact, though they did have a temporary indoor teaching space available previously, having averaged giving less than 125 total lessons January through March in each of his previous three seasons, Atchison gave a total of 260 lessons in those same three months to start the 2022 season which has not let up since.
As a result, though he did help with Operation 36 this spring and will do so again in the fall, having averaged nearly 500 hours of combine private and junior golf instruction June 1st through August 31st the previous two seasons, Mark gave the reigns of the program to Kevin Trobaugh and Andrew Reedy
for the summer and ended the same 3-month stretch this season giving just shy of 500 hours of private instruction.
Matching the trajectory of the last few seasons, Mark will once again eclipse his numbers from last season and is on pace to give 1150 individual lessons and a total of 1250 total hours of instruction. As mentioned before, in 2020, with the help of his Teaching Assistant, Kevin Trobaugh, Mark headed the facility’s adoption of the Operation 36 Junior Golf Program, having created four 8-week long semesters that run through the entire year.
Having navigated the pandemic their first year, as they hit the midway point of the 2022 OP36 season they have created a total of 152 new golfers based on the program’s parameters that a new golfer is created when a given participant can score even par 36 or better from 25 yards away from the hole. With their program’s newfound success, fellow DMG PGA Golf Professionals Don Winker and Janet Rooney launched a Women’s Operation 36 program in the spring of 2021 which has seen comparable growth.
With an extremely large and active membership increasingly interested in improving their games, most of Atchison’s instruction is focused on members of the club, with 10% of his students being non- members. Of the 150-160 students Atchison works with on an annual basis, he sees a 50/50 split between males and females, with 70-80% of those being adults and the rest juniors.
As for the professional teaching staff at Des Moines Golf, though informal, they meet regularly throughout the season for impromptu brainstorming/teacher training sessions which includes PGA Director of Golf Scott Howe, PGA Head Professionals Don Winker and Janet Rooney, PGA Teaching Professional Kevin
Trobaugh and PGA Associate Andrew Reedy in addition to their many Golf Shop Assistants and Interns.
During these sessions they discuss specific concerns or issues they might be having with various students, training aids and drills they are having success with, as well as any new ideas they may have come across be it online, in discussion with other instructors, or through their own teaching or while working on their own games so they can continue to grow and improve as a group.
Matt Ruehling, PGA General Manager of the Des Moines Golf & Country Club, “Mark has done a fantastic job as a teacher at DMGCC. Our members rave about his teaching ability, and he takes pride in making our members better.”
Atchison has won Teacher of the Year in 2019.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Mark Atchison as our 2022 Teacher of the Year.
Bidney Wins Youth Player Development Award
Sarah Bidney of Wakonda Club has been named the 2022 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 thoughout the Section.
When asked on what this means to win this award Bidney responded with, “I am truly humbled to receive this award for my work with junior golfers. Juniors are such a fun, lively, creative, and curious group of golfers to work with! It is so rewarding to see their development over the years – to see their potential develop into life long enjoyment of the game – so awesome! To know my teaching and coaching is worthy of this award is again very humbling and I am very thankful for this honor.”
Bidney is in her second term serving on the Board of Iowa Section, with both terms spent as the co-chair of the Junior Golf Committee. Alongside Iowa PGA’s Assistant Executive Director/Junior Golf Director Tess Goudy they have reached every goal they set at the beginning of their planning periods. This has been a wonderful experience that has produced two online instructional webinars during 2021 for our Iowa Junior Tour Members. She was able to secure John Dunigan, a PGA Master Professional, Golf Digest Top 50 Teacher, 4-time Philly PGA Teacher of the Year for our first ever and it was awesome. For the second event she was able to secure Dr. Rick Jensen who has trained numerous PGA and LPGA Tour Professional’s to help our juniors better understand what is happening when they a rut or feel they have done “mental”. They also conducted a Golf Fun Day at Jester Park last season that the kids truly enjoyed this fun, low-pressure event. This season two seminars with college coaches were conducted for our Iowa PGA Junior Tour Members to learn more about collegiate golf and recruitment.
When the 2022 season wraps up she will have administered 26 junior tournaments at Wakonda Club. Along with the 26 events they also have on-course play for juniors on Thursday mornings. They are very fortunate that Wakonda dedicates Thursday mornings from 8-1am for junior only play and has done so for years! A typical Thursday morning this summer would have 8-10 high school prep or high school players tee off. 20-30 Operation 36 event participants playing 9 holes and 40-60 Birdie Bomber/Sport Camp kids playing 3-4 holes. Their largest morning had almost 100 juniors playing! To date they have had 975 players on the course in programs – not including practice outside of class. Bidney anticipates another 120 this Fall. On course play is so incredibly important to the growth of the game and getting juniors the on-course experience, they need to move on to the Iowa PGA Junior Tour and high school/college. She is very proud she can get these juniors out on the course as much as they do and appreciate Wakonda's willingness to dedicate chunks of time each week to on course junior play!
For the first time in her career, she was able to hire a Teaching Intern for the summer. This had been a goal of hers for several years now and it was wonderful to have it come to life. She was very fortunate to be able to hire Nicolaus Latcham, a 4th year student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln in the PGA Golf Management program-he will graduate this December as a Class A member of the PGA. Nicolaus was also a student of hers since the age of 12. He was also the 2018 Charlie Burkhart Scholarship recipient. Nicolaus and her have kept in close contact over his years at Nebraska, discussing his internship options and teaching related questions. When Wakonda approved the hire of an intern she knew Nicolaus was someone who would be perfect. Truly he was – eager to learn and was very hard working, pleasant, fit in well with the membership, and if Bidney could hire him for an entire season she would do so in a heartbeat. She was also able to hire Paige Hoffmann, former Valley High School player/Girls Individual State Champ and Team State Champ. She also took short game lessons from Bidney this year as well as helped with junior programs. Paige was tremendous as well.
Bidney puts a lot of what she does out on social media, not only to encourage and congratulate the students in her programs, but she also knows other Professionals, primarily those in the Operation 36 network, look to her outlets for ideas and ways to congratulate their own students. She has shared her Operation-36 experience with many Professionals around the country who called prior to signing up as a coach.
Earlier this year Bidney was asked to be on a panel for the Iowa Assistant's Teaching and Coaching Summit on March 21 at Blue Top Ridge. It was great fun to meet with the Assistants and share her experiences teaching and coaching so far and answer their questions! Brian Johnson was also on the panel.
She had one of the best compliments this season as a Wakonda member attended a member-guest in Texas. He was so excited and proud to tell her he had a Professional down there seek him out to tell him she knew her through Operation 36 and other instructional education events and that she was one of the best. What a compliment!
She is a constant learner and attends many online seminars and in-person seminars, positively representing Wakonda and the Iowa Section each and every time. She believes she’s a good ambassador for the game and our section through continuous improvement as a coach – bringing the best technology and expertise to the lesson tee. She was an early adapter to SportsBox AI – an amazing 3D swing analysis tool. Sherry Newsome came down for a lesson this season to help her with her own game as well as chat instruction and BioSwing Dynamics – something they are both trained in. Bidney’s work on the Iowa Board has positively promoted the game.
Overall, Sarah has created a Junior Golf Academy with programs for ages 3 to graduating senior. These programs are based on fundamentals of the game and are developmentally appropriate for each child based on their age, ability, and maturity. They have a lot of fun and juniors are in an environment that promotes learning, is encouraging, and they will succeed with enough time and space given to develop the skills needed to play this wonderful game. The best thing Bidney is doing is to promote the game of golf and to grow the game of golf one student at a time.
Bidney has won Teacher of the Year in 2010, 2012 and 2015 and Youth Player Development in 2015 and 2020.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Sarah Bidney as our 2022 Youth Player Development Award recipient.
Johnson Wins Player Development Award
Brian Johnson of Elmcrest Country Club has been named the 2022 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 groth 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 Johnson responded with, “It is a special award. One of the passions I have in my roll at Elmcrest Country Club is to offer new opportunities and experiences that lead to game improvement and game enjoyment. Golfers play the game for many different reasons so whether it is seeing a player take a stronger liking to the game or someone who reaches their personal goals, it is all rewarding. Thank you to those who submitted a nomination and to the committee for their selection!”
The Elmcrest Junior Golf Academy consisted of 12-weeks of instructional clinics along with six Friday Junior Golf League events throughout summer and fall seasons. The EJGA promotes learning the on-course aspects of the game at a young age while playing in a team format. 2022 consisted of juniors ages 6-13 and totaled 67 participants.
Tee It Up (High School Playing Series) is an 8-week series made up of supervised practice followed by 9-holes of playing with the pro. This series was designed for high school golfers with the primary focus on bringing juniors together to play with one another as well as play with a PGA Professional. 2022 consisted of juniors ages 14-18 and totaled 16 participants.
Play To Compete (High School/College Advanced Series) is a first-year program specifically geared towards the more series high school or college player who is competitively involved in the game. The priority of this 9-week program was on-course coaching in a game-like environment. A total of four juniors were selected for this pioneer program in 2022.
PGA Junior League 13U Team: Captained Team ECC in 2022. This program consisted of 7-weeks of on-course team coaching sessions along with five competitions within the CR/Iowa City League. PGA JLG All-Star 13U Team: Captained the CR/Iowa City East PGA JLG 13U All-Star team, which won the 2022 Iowa Section Championship.
Get Golf Ready Fore Women Spring Instructional Series is a 5-week intro to golf instructional program which offered three classes weekly which in 2022 totaled 37 participants. Drive, Chip, & Putt Local Qualifier Elmcrest Country Club was a host to a private local qualifier in 2022 which a total of 23 juniors participated.
Johnson was a volunteer instructor for the 2022 virtual golf pilot program of the National Disabled Veterans Golf Clinic. Johnson was a junior golf guest speaker for the 2022 Iowa PGA Associates Teaching & Coaching Summit. He was an instructor for the 2022 Iowa PGA Junior Golf Academy. He was part of the PGA.Coach guest panel speaker for the 2021 Iowa PGA Fall Meeting.
This is Johnson’s first Iowa PGA Award.
The Iowa PGA Congratulates Brian Johnson as our 2022 Player Development Award.
Follow the Iowa PGA
For more information and schedule updates, fans can follow the Iowa PGA on Facebook (facebook.com/Iowapga), Twitter (@iowapga) and YouTube (youtube.com/iowapga). Fans can also get a behind the scenes look on Instagram (@iowapga).