By Hutton Marshall

Nonprofit parlays golf into life lessons and educational achievement

Golf, its avid players will tell you, is an apt metaphor for life. Like success in the real world, golf requires patience, a calm mind and honesty, because each player keeps track of their own score and penalties.

It was this comparison that struck former Chargers player Ernie Wright during a fateful round of golf at Mission Valley’s Stardust Golf Course in 1994. The men Wright golfed with that day approached him about starting a caddy program for inner-city minorities, and Wright saw the value of instilling the life lessons of golf in San Diego’s youth. More than a caddy program, Wright envisioned a nonprofit that taught the importance of honesty, perseverance and education through golf.

Soon after, County Supervisor Ron Roberts (then a city councilmember) helped Wright form an official 501(c)3 nonprofit later that year. The organization then took over a lease for the Colina Park Golf Couse, giving birth to Pro Kids San Diego.

Today, Pro Kids serves as many as 1,500 students every year, many of them from the low-income community of City Heights, which lies south of Kensington and Talmadge and east of North Park. The organization was incorporated in 2002 into the First Tee organization, which shares the sentiment that golf offers many important life lessons for kids.

The nonprofit is now overseen by Keith Padgett, whose first game of golf as a boy incidentally took place at the Colina Park Golf Course that Pro Kids now calls home. He said back then, the course was in a state of disrepair.

“I grew up in Lemon Grove, Spring Valley, and when I was about 10 or so my father took me just over the hill for my first round,” Padgett said. “It was in pretty bad shape then — I didn’t know that that wasn’t what golf courses were supposed to look like — and it got even worse from there.”

While Pro Kids bases its philosophy — and just as importantly, its allure to kids — on golf, the underlying goal of the organization is to get middle and high school kids on a path toward college and a good job. Students in Pro Kids don’t just play golf after school, they get tutoring, a “homework club” and educational resources in Pro Kids’ Learning Center.

Today, the Learning Center is a modern, 7,000-square-foot building on the pristine, renovated Colina Park course. Back when Wright started Pro Kids, the only building on the course was a trailer where golfers checked for their round. That served as their first education center. Wright and other founders had plenty of other problems to address on the course, too.

“There was graffiti on the walls and on the fences,” Padgett said. “And a lot of drug deals being made inside the gate and so forth.”

Despite the challenging start, Wright built the course into a place not just suitable for Pro Kids, but a course where the public comes to play too. The par 3 course is now frequented by many locals on a regular basis.

Pro Kids’ location, a rundown golf course in City Heights, hardly seems like a typical location for a golfing organization. City Heights is an incredibly diverse neighborhood with a large percentage of new immigrants and low-income families. Wright and Padgett acknowledged that this was the neighborhood were Pro Kids could make the greatest impact, even though golf is a foreign concept to many of the kids.

“For a lot of immigrant kids, a lot of them have never even heard of golf, and if they have, it’s seen as a white, rich person game, not a game that they might be interested in,” Padgett said, adding that many of these kids have become exceptional golfers, most notably a brother and sister with over 90 holes-in-one between them.

Wright passed away in 2007, after battling terminal cancer for several years. Even while undergoing cancer treatment, Wright continued to work with the Pro Kids board of directors and staff to create a leadership succession plan and a long-term strategic plan. He envisioned expanding beyond City Heights and opening Pro Kids in multiple locations throughout the county.

Wright never got to see this goal realized, but in 2012, Pro Kids opened its second location in Oceanside, creating a six-hole golf course from an empty lot to serve North County children.

Padgett, who took over a couple years after the Oceanside course opened, hopes to strengthen the ties of golf to educational and professional success. This month, he launched “The Academy” at Pro Kids, which offers kids a more rigorous involvement with the organization.

Some are at the course every day; others show up only once a month. Kids in The Academy would spend at least two days a week on the course, with additional time honing their knowledge of STEM-related curriculum.

Pro Kids also offers several college scholarships to its students every year. They also coordinate high school internships with several prosperous local companies, most notably Qualcomm. He says the goal is to get underrepresented minorities into STEM careers.

“When we talked to Qualcomm, they said, ‘first of all there’s not enough Americans with [STEM] degrees, second we’d like to hire more women and minorities with those degrees but we don’t know where to find them,” Padgett said. “And we said, ‘hey, we know where you can find them. If you give us a grant to start this academy, we will start with the sixth-graders and get them all the way through college and then hopefully you’ll help find them a job.’”

For Padgett, the challenge of providing underserved minorities with an affordable path toward a college degree is a familiar one. After being the first in his family not only to graduate high school, but to graduate college and earn a master’s degree, he spent over four decades running Southern California nonprofits geared toward serving low-income youth. He retired several years ago from his most recent post running The Boys & Girls Clubs of San Dieguito.

“Forty-five years of being a CEO at various nonprofits I thought it was about time to ride off into the sunset,” Padgett said of his decision to retire. “Seven months of playing golf whenever I wanted to and spending time with the grandkids was great, but I realized I had more fuel in the tank and I realized I needed to be part of a mission like I had been for 45 years.”

So he quickly rethought his decision to retire, began hearing job offers, and ultimately ended up finding Pro Kids to be the standout choice.

“Of all the places I’ve ever been — others have been really great and have done some great things — but I can honestly say that Pro Kids is the best place I’ve ever been. It really is a special place,” Padgett said. “I relate to the kids, I relate to the neighborhoods, I relate to the programs — it was just a perfect fit.”

Pro Kids has about 200 volunteers regularly taking kids out to play, helping students with their studies and providing other support for the nonprofit, but Padgett said that with the new location in Oceanside and the more involved Academy program starting, Pro Kids will need more help than ever.

Dana Albert, a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch and a Pro Kids volunteer in Oceanside, said volunteering has been a great way to give back while also burning off some stress playing a game he loves. Albert stressed though that those interested in volunteering shouldn’t be deterred just because they aren’t avid golfers.

“Be open minded and don’t think that golf skill is a prerequisite because it’s not, it really isn’t. I think someone’s interest or ability to play golf is really just a bonus,” Albert said. “I think you want to have a desire to be productive by helping kids to stay out of trouble.”

Albert spent 20 years in the golfing industry before moving to the financial sector. He said being able to show kids growing up in his hometown what’s possible through golf has been a powerful motivation tool.

“You can take 20 minutes and go out and play six holes with a kid in Oceanside and make somebody’s day. You can have one great shot in 20 or 25, the kid will see it at might be inspired — you just never know where that’s going to take somebody’s future,” Albert said.

Padgett also stressed that the important thing for potential volunteers to consider is that you don’t have to be an outstanding golfer to take kids out for a round to play. Retired teachers and business people can help with the educational programs too.

Even the most novice golfer can help — so long as the kids have an adult to interact with and learn from, even if golf isn’t the lesson being taught. To contact Pro Kids or to learn more about the work they do, visit thefirstteesofsandiego.org.

—Contact Hutton Marshall at [email protected].