By Susan Jenior

Staff Writer

Jessie Mix, Souotheast varsity girls golf team member, watches the technique of a beginning golfer.
Susan Jenior/Portage Sports

This is the seventh year that future golfers for the Southeast Pirates have gathered in the school’s elementary gymnasium and cafeteria to swing their first club or hone their skills.

The popular “Pirates Play Golf” program holds two sessions, with the first group including elementary students as young as second grade.

The youths are run through a series of stations, including short irons, long irons and putting. The end of the sessions culminate with a trip to Olde Dutch Mill Golf Course, home of the Southeast boys and girls varsity golf teams.

Southeast High School coaches Cindy Fesemyer and Mike Jenior lead the sessions with the help of volunteer high-school golfers and adult volunteers.

Southeast boys golf coach Mike Jenior helps teach a proper follow-through form to a young golfer. Susan Jenior/Portage Sports

Fesemyer, girls varsity coach and retired Southeast physical-education teacher, and Jenior, varsity boys coach and the Director of Golf at Olde Dutch Mill Golf Course in Lake Milton, welcomed the golfers, stressed safety and ran the golfers through a group warmups and stretches before sending everyone to their beginning station.

The program runs after school on Thursdays. Both Fesemyer and Jenior credit the program with helping Southeast to earn success on the links. Many of the high school-golfers helping the youngsters were products of the program themselves.

One of the golfers helping during the first session was Taylor Blazek, a junior, who qualified for the OHSAA Division II State Tournament this season, the first in school history to advance to the championship event.

Cindy Fesemyer helps youth golfers with their putting stroke.
Susan Jenior/Portage Sports