Midland North Girls Festival of Golf 2016
Monday 22nd August saw the inaugural "MNR Girls' Festival of Golf" take place at Trent Lock Golf club with 107 girls aged 6-18 take part in a variety of activities. The event was created by the Midlands North Region County Junior Organisers to provide an opportunity for girls in the 6 counties (Notts, Derbys, Shrops, Staffs, Lincs and Leics) to meet, play golf, have fun and be inspired.
The event incorporated the girls scratch and handicap league finals for the more experienced players and a 9 hole competition for girls who are up and coming or new to golf. In addition during the day we had skills workshops, a pirate golf challenge and a trick shot demo. The day finished with a meal and presentation of the prizes and trophies.
We had 22 girls from Nottinghamshire invited to attend the day, aged 6-18, five of which had only just started playing golf this year from through the Girls Golf Rocks project.
Our scratch team won their match on the day convincingly against Derbyshire 5-1 and were runners up in the league this year to Staffordshire, who had narrowly beaten us earlier in the season.
Our Handicap team won their match on the day 3-1 against Staffordshire and the team finished tied third in the league. Thank you to all the girls who have played for both the scratch and handicap teams over the season.
The 9 hole competition on the day was won by a team from Derbyshire, with Leicestershire runners up. Our girls did very well with Amelia Nugent having the best score from the white cones outside the winning teams.
After the "serious golf" the girls all had a go on the pirate golf challenge where there was lots of laughter to be heard, including from the County Junior Organisers who had their own competition - unfortunately I did not do Notts proud in the CJO challenge, Lincs won!
The last activity of the day was an opportunity for the girls to see the Rob Brown Trick shot show. I think the girls were amazed by what they saw, many taking photos and videos as they couldn't believe their eyes!
The day finished with a meal and presentation of the prizes by Lauren Spray, England Golf's Women and Girls Participation Manager, who attended the day to support the event and worked very hard on the desk too!
My thanks must go to all the other CJOs who helped plan and run the day along with the NCLGA officials who helped: Pam Loch, Helen Maber, Jenny Smith, Glenys Priestley and Emma Anderson. Maureen Clarke also did an enormous amount of work to set up the courses and acted as chief referee on the day, bring along 3 other referress to oversee the matches: Val Peat, Ali Boultby and Linsday Carruthers. In addition thank to the lady Captain of Trent Lock Wendy Advock and Val Douthwaite who helped superivse the 9 hole competition.
A final big thank you must go to Trent Lock Golf Club for hosting the event, they were just brilliant and seemed to cope with everything I threw at them; without their input the day would not have been the success it was. I think it has set the bar for Derbyshire to host it next year!
Emma Howie
NCLGA Junior Coordinator
An extensive selection of photographs from the day can be viewed here.