I got an email two weeks ago inviting me to play golf.
I get those emails occasionally, but this one was extra intriguing to me, so I followed up on it.
It was from my good friend and fellow adoptive dad Denny Duncan.
Denny is on the list of people that when they ask you for help or a favor, you do it gladly. Denny was a principal at Jefferson Elementary School in my early years of working in Warsaw, which is where I got to know him best.
Now he is the women’s golf coach at Grace College, and his email invited me to come play a round of golf at Stonehenge with some of his girls.
In my head, I was thinking “OK, so you are asking me to come play golf with your ladies, at Stonehenge, and you are going to walk around with us … can I say YES fast enough?”
So last Tuesday I headed over there to tee it up. I hit a bucket of balls first, though. I don’t play golf nearly as much as I used to (having kids will do that to you) and the last thing I wanted to do is look like a dork in front of girls who are playing college golf, right?
I crossed Pierceton Road and found Denny and some of the girls on the practice green, so I joined him as he was sending out the first groups for a nine-hole practice round. He introduced me to Sydney Abbott, a sophomore from Greenwood. Within a few seconds, Lauren Keiser from Pataskala, Ohio walked up and said hello. The Grace women’s golf program is only in its third season, and Lauren was the first to commit to playing her college golf there.
Our fourth had a late class, so we walked over to the first tee to get started without her.
It was cold and a little windy, so we were bundled up. The sun would peek through heavy overcast on occasion, but it was definitely pullover weather.
We put golf clubs to golf balls and set off on the front nine. Not long after we arrived at our tee shots, Anna Marshall, a sophomore from Wauseon, Ohio, hustled up to meet us.
The purpose of Denny inviting me to play that day is that he wanted me to meet and get to know his girls. He is so happy with the quality of the people in his program that he wanted someone to come and spend some time with them – get to know them more the way he knows them. At a place like Grace, winning matters but making people into winners matters more, and Denny genuinely gushes about how much he likes coaching these ladies. More than that, he just looks forward to being with them.
His enthusiasm for them made joining him that day an easy choice. You can never meet too many quality people.
So as our round progressed, I felt more open to ask them about things like why they chose Grace, what their majors were and what they wanted to do when they graduated from college. They answered those questions quickly and left little doubt that their answers were heart-felt.
So I dug a little deeper.
I ask them about how Grace had changed them, and how were they different and/or better because they came to Grace. They each had to ponder that a little longer than the previous questions I had asked, but they all answered and were very honest in their answers.
Then they asked me to share with them the answers to the questions I had asked them, and I was happy to. Their willingness to open up to me made it simple to do the same with them.
As we got to hole No. 7, we felt rain drops. Lauren teed off because we didn’t take the rain drops too seriously.
That was a mistake.
It began to pour down rain in buckets. The 7th green and the 8th tee station sit just south of the intersection of County Road 250 East and Pierceton Road. There is no shelter there – nowhere to hide. So we started moving back toward the pavilion at the halfway house as quickly as we could. Hole No. 8 is a 400-yard par 4, and No. 9 is a 500-yard par 5. That adds up to 900 yards we had to navigate to get out of the deluge. Next time you drive in that area, take a look at it. Then imagine walking it in a driving rain.
We made it, but we were all soaked and cold and not too thrilled at that point.
Even then, the other team members stuck around to introduce themselves and let me get to know them a little bit. They talked about their hometowns and what they were studying, and they let me share for a couple of minutes about my life and family.
I was so encouraged. We hear so much about kids their age (18-21) being hard to reach, hard to communicate with. These ladies were fun to be around, they were easy to talk to, and they were a credit to their families and Grace College.
Denny Duncan is not just smart, he is wise (and there IS a difference). He didn’t ask me to come play golf with his team for the purpose of talking me into writing an article about them. But he was right, they are a special group of people and the walk I took with three of them and their coach could never be ruined by the soaking we got at the end of it. He wanted to share them with me, and I am a better person because he did.
When it was over, I had a good feeling about our future. These ladies will be good at whatever they do, and they will be great leaders in their families and communities.
Thank you Lauren, Sydney and Anna for a wonderful walk in a beautiful place.
The next Lady Lancer golf venture to get ice cream is on me.
