Twenty kids from the Lac La Ronge Indian Band will get a chance to learn playing tips from Aboriginal golf pro Notah Begay the third this weekend.
The kids, from La Ronge and Stanley Mission, will come into Saskatoon today, take part in a golf clinic at the Dakota Dunes course with Begay tomorrow and return home on Sunday.
They range in age from 12 to 16.
Gord Struthers of Cameco Corporation, which is sponsoring the trip, says the company feels it is important to give the kids some time with someone who started out like many of them and was able to go on to achieve the highest levels in his sport.
“Notah, he’s an inspiring story – he grew up in poverty and he followed a challenging and very unlikely dream and became a professional athlete and a really amazing person,” he says. “We think that to get that story in front of kids from the north is to show them that anything’s possible and believing in yourself is a really important thing and you need to set goals and follow your dreams and things like this can happen.”
LLRIB councillor Sam Roberts, who is helping to organize the trip, says they used a few different criteria in selecting which kids were given the opportunity to go.
“We usually contact the schools and the teachers or the principals and guidance counselors and we like to go with the three A’s which are attendance academics and attitude is what we follow in our policy with our band schools, so this is usually what we go through and go by all the time.”
Roberts adds the trip is a great chance for the youth to learn valuable tips from a PGA Tour player in a sport they don’t typically participate in, living in northern Saskatchewan.
Begay, the only Native American player on the PGA Tour, is in the Saskatoon area for the week for a number of activities including the Dakota Dunes Open.