On Thursday, May 12, seniors went on a trip with some of the physical education teachers to go golfing. Students needed to fill out a permission slip and pay $10 to be able to go. The students went from either 9 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. or 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Physical education teacher, Thomas Palfey, and other teachers, put together this trip for students.

“All the gym teachers during in-service sit and come up with some ideas,” Palfey said. “All of us have played golf badly, probably, at one point, and we just figured that it was a good thing since we’ve had other golf clubs for a lot of years and we haven’t used them. I know the person before me once took them up to Sinking Valley to play 18 holes and that’s probably a future plan but for right now, we are just starting small and working our way up.”

During this trip, students went to Burgi’s Back Nine and the driving range by Look of Eagles Stable.

“We will go down on a bus,” Palfey said. “Half of them will go over to the driving range, and we’ll get a big bucket of balls that probably has like 50 to 75 balls in it. I imagine 90% of these people have never hit a golf ball in their life, so we’ll go over some stuff. For the other place, now the last time we went, everyone got a sleeve of new balls, which is great, and two people will probably go to each hole and try to score.”

Students will be arriving at the golf courses by bus.

“I know we have the same bus,” physical education teacher Megan Yingling said. “I think we are just taking one because we only have about 45 kids going, maybe 40. They will take one group out for about two hours, and they’ll bring them back and then after lunch the next group will go.”

Students will get some experience in golfing when they go on this trip.

“I mean, will they get better in one day? Probably not, but at least I think every time that we go somewhere you see people that have never done it before and you know that a few of them will go and at least not be afraid to try it for now on and that’s what we are trying to do,” Palfey said.

For students who didn’t know how to golf, some gym teachers like Megan Yingling, Paul Piccioti and Thomas Palfey were there to help.

“The problem is we don’t have a lot of time to teach them a lot of stuff, but the teachers that are down there will try to give them the general idea,” Palfey said. “But you don’t have to be a great golfer to golf, so you just go out and have a good time.”

One of the reasons the gym teachers decided to make the trip was they are trying to do things that take students into the community.

“We’re trying to do things with the new things that we have,” Palfey said. “We’ve done the Canoe Creek trip four times, and golfing is the first time this year. We have a senior fishing trip coming up where they are going to go to a private lake. We’re just trying to come up with things where we can take them out in the community so that they know what kind of things are available to them.”

This trip also lines up with the updated gym curriculum.

“So we switched our physical education curriculum a couple of years ago to include what we’d like our students to do when they leave school,” Palfey said. “What physical education used to be was team sports mostly, and we wanted to get away from that because that’s not a lot of people anymore. When you get older, there are a lot of opportunities to have fun at golf type events. It should be something that we teach our students, even if everybody doesn’t like it, but at least they’re introduced to it.”

There were about 40 students who went on the trip.

“I was excited to go on the trip because I was always interested in doing physical things like golfing and tennis,” senior Keriah Rolley said. “When I heard about the trip I knew it was going to be a good opportunity to learn how to handle golf clubs and how to learn how to golf.”

Some students may have learned a few things about golfing.

“When we first arrived there, we went to the driving ranges and just like free hit with the golf clubs. It was very interesting because I felt like I was learning how to use the driver, and I also learned that I was a left handed golfer,” Rolley said. “After the driving cages, I went golfing with Palfey, and he taught me how to get better and about what club to use. The better I did the more fun I was having.”