Cash boost for ‘Toba junior golf

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/05/2019 (2562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Junior golf in Manitoba is benefiting from a generous gift that will provide the sport’s governing body with $60,000 this year as part of a $3-million endowment to support grassroots development of the game.

The Alex & Peggy Colonello Foundation, established in 2018 with a mandate to support junior golf in the province of Manitoba, is the source of the funding.

“As far as we know, this type of personal commitment is unprecedented for golf in the province, let alone in the country,” Golf Manitoba executive director Jared Ladobruk said Tuesday. “We feel very fortunate this is here and see it as an incredible future for junior golf in the province if it all works out as it’s intended to.”

The Colonellos are longtime supporters of the sport. Peggy Colonello, who is in her mid-90s, served as president of the Manitoba Ladies’ Golf Association in the 1970s and was an active member at Elmhurst Golf & Country Club, where she and her husband Alex were members since the 1940s.

Peggy Colonello also served a two-year term as president of the Canadian Ladies’ Golf Association from 1982-83 and was subsequently inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Manitoba Golf Hall of Fame in 2003.

Alex Colonello was the owner of Bayco Golf Inc., a prominent golf accessory firm. He died in 2013 at the age of 93.

Golf Manitoba is expected to be able to access funds from the endowment each year.

“That is our hope,” Ladobruk said. “It is our intention to reach out to the foundation next year and the year after that and the year after that. We have an idea about what junior golf programming can look like in the future and we’ve communicated that to them and they’ve been supportive of that.”

Golf Manitoba is targeting specific areas of need, such as a community golf coach training certification pilot project in conjunction with Seven Oaks School Division, in addition to other junior programming.

“This year, there’s some key areas that are going to benefit from that,” Ladobruk said. “In junior golf, we’ll be growing our golf-in-schools programming, which is something we’ve offered for a number of years through our partnership with Golf Canada… We’re also going to be increasing our funding to help those junior men and women who qualify for national competitions this year with Golf Canada, to help assist with their costs associated with that. And then, the University of Manitoba Bisons program will receive some funding as well for this year and the Manitoba Golf Hall of Fame and Museum will also receive some funding.”

Ladobruk said the school program can be a crucial part of Golf Manitoba’s mandate.

“Our hope is this program continues to grow year after year,” he said. “Ideally, every school in the province would have at least one teacher that had this community golf coach certification and I think by linking golf to physical literacy, it’s an area we can grow in and kids see it as part of school and get introduced to it earlier.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14