Over the past 3 years the academies junior section has undergone some huge changes growing from just 4 children to well over 100 taking lessons each week. Our vision at the academy is to create the largest hotbed of talented golfers in the U.K with a steady stream of competitive Professional Golfers coming through the ranks.
Along with the volume of children in the academy, its important we create ignition in these children to make them want to succeed within the sport. Motivation can come from many different driving factors be it internal motivations (e.g. a burning desire to be the best) or external motivations (e.g. to win trophies or be rich). However to reach such goals it takes more than just pure talent with research suggesting that it takes a lot of hard work, in fact some research suggests that it takes around 20,000 hours over 20 years to become the very best in the game…thats just under 20 hours worth of practice a week for 20 years!
One of the biggest challenges we therefore face is motivating these children to stay in the game and constantly striving to get better. The academy tries to provide motivation and recognition of the their development several different ways with a golf grading systems constantly recognising children's physical and technical development and awarding their development with different coloured caps/wristbands, competitions on appropriate length courses, and this term has seen the introduction of our new credit system.
The Belfry’s Junior Programme rewards juniors each time they play golf; be it on the range, course, PlayStation pitch etc with a credit. The children who accumulate the most credits at the end of each term are rewarded with a scholarship and certificate and the children with the most credits at the end of each year are rewarded with the Player of the Year trophy. The system is very simple but has been extremely effective with parents Tweeting, Facebooking, emailing and texting pictures of their children playing golf for their credits. We look forward to seeing the results of their hard work in the coming years and we are sure that such motivations will help the The Belfry Junior Programme grow into the U.K’s best academy.