Dear Coach, Thanks
The golf world spends this week staring at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, where the PGA TOUR's Charles Schwab Challenge sends another field of stars chasing the famous tartan jacket. That is the show everybody tunes in for. Running quietly alongside it is a second story with a longer shelf life, and it deserves a turn under the lights. First Tee Week, May 23 through 30, points the spotlight at the people who rarely get one. These are the coaches and mentors who spend their seasons teaching kids how to grow into capable adults, using golf as the classroom. Broadcaster Jim Nantz, a longtime champion of the organization, serves as Honorary Chair and leads an alumni conversation in Fort Worth during the tournament, asking accomplished young people to talk about the coaches who shaped their lives one lesson at a time.
The Dear Coach campaign
The centerpiece of the week is a storytelling campaign called Dear Coach, and it lands with real weight. Participants and alumni write directly to the adults who changed their trajectory, and the letters tend to skip the golf entirely. They talk about learning to embrace who they are and stepping into the role of a confident leader. First Tee CEO Greg McLaughlin framed it plainly when he said the coaches in the network are the reason a young person shows up, stays engaged, and walks away changed. That framing matters because it reorders the priorities most people assume a junior golf program holds. The swing is the bait. The character is the catch. You can read the local letters and meet the mentors behind them through First Tee Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky's Dear Coach page, which collects stories from kids across the region.
What First Tee teaches
First Tee started in 1997 as a joint effort by five pillars of the sport, the LPGA, the Masters Tournament, the PGA of America, the PGA TOUR, and the USGA. The original goal was access, getting clubs into the hands of kids who otherwise would never touch the game. The curriculum that grew up around that access turned the organization into something bigger than a feeder system for future golfers. The teaching rests on two frameworks that coaches return to again and again. The Nine Core Values give kids a vocabulary for character, covering honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, courtesy, judgment, confidence, responsibility, and perseverance. The Nine Healthy Habits round out the picture across the physical, emotional, and social parts of a young life, touching energy, play, safety, vision, mind, family, friends, school, and community. Coaches add simple decision tools on top, including a STAR routine that asks a kid to stop, think, anticipate, and respond before reacting to whatever just went sideways, whether that happens in a bunker or a hallway. Golf earns its place as the vehicle because of how the game is built. Players call penalties on themselves. They manage frustration shot by shot. They mostly compete against their own standard rather than an opponent across the net. The organization likes to say golf is a metaphor for life, that the score matters less than what a kid learns getting around the course, and the structure of the sport backs that claim up.
A national program 150 chapters deep
The reach is national and the footprint is large. First Tee operates through 150 chapters, delivers programming inside roughly 11,000 schools and 1,400 community centers, and touches about 2.2 million young people every year. The school program has been folded into physical education classes since 2004 and aligns with national PE standards, which lets the curriculum meet kids who will never set foot on a course on their own. The support follows participants as they grow up. Teenagers can climb a leadership pipeline that includes a Leadership Series, a Leadership Academy, the First Tee National Championship for the strongest high school golfers, the long running Game Changers Academy, and the Drive Your Future Academy built for young women. At the top sits a College Scholarship Program offering up to twenty thousand dollars along with mentoring, professional development workshops, and help landing internships and jobs. There is hard data behind why the organization keeps character at the center. Research from First Tee and The Harris Poll found that nearly ninety percent of parents see character as a fading value that deserves more emphasis, and ninety-one percent believe sports coaching should help their child succeed on the field and off it. First Tee built its entire model to answer that exact demand.
The Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky chapter
The regional chapter shows what the national mission looks like at street level. First Tee Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky launched in 2006 and now runs programming at eleven golf courses spread across seven counties, Hamilton, Clermont, Butler, Warren, Boone, Campbell, and Kenton. It serves kids from ages five through eighteen and reaches more than eleven hundred local young people each year. The chapter also localizes the bigger opportunities. Its Rita S. Metcalfe Scholarship has gone to twenty-nine First Tee seniors since it began in 2018, named for an avid golfer and advocate for youth in the community. Every donation made during First Tee Week funds programming directly across those seven counties, which keeps the cost of participation low enough that family income stops being a barrier to entry.
How to help this week
First Tee Week comes with an open invitation, and the asks are refreshingly doable. The first is attention. Follow the Dear Coach stories as the chapter shares them and let the kids tell you in their own words what a good coach is worth. The second is time. The chapter is always looking for caring role models, and the job description leaves out any requirement for a low handicap. A passion for mentoring does the heavy lifting, and trained staff handle the golf instruction. The third is fuel. Supporters can back the mission through a one time gift during the week or join the new First Tee Donor Ambassador program, which sustains and expands access through monthly giving to a local chapter or to headquarters. You can start either path at First Tee's give today page or learn more about the local chapter at First Tee Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. The leaderboard at Colonial will reset by Sunday night and a new name will own the headlines. The work happening under the banner of First Tee Week resists that kind of expiration. A kid who learns perseverance over a missed three foot putt carries it into a job interview a decade later. That is the long game, and the coaches running it deserve a week with their names called out loud.