We held our annual golf outing this year again on the last Friday in September, and again at the beautiful A.J. Jolly (Campbell County Park) golf course in Alexandria. We won the weather lottery, too (or God blessed us again) with an absolutely gorgeous day of “sunny and 75”. And, Terry Jolly has the county golf course in amazingly good condition. We filled the 9:00 AM shotgun tee off with 32 foursomes (up from 20 last year), or two groups on every tee but four holes. That’s just about capacity for a golf course, if you want to play in five hours, which we did and were drinking beer on the 19th patio by 2:00 PM.

We are considering an increase to 36 teams next year, or 144 golfers, but the golf pros tell us “that’ll make it last over 6 hours to complete”, and we don’t think most of you golfers would appreciate that. So, FYI, next year’s outing will be “first come, first served”. Contact Mentoring Plus and register for next year’s golf outing now at nearly the same price ($125), because the fee for 2018 will be $135/golfer.

It was a wonderful day of competition and fun. Mark Krebs, former Principal at Newport Middle School, put together the winning team with Jeff Snyder, Chris Setter and Shawn Holbrook, at 13 under par. Campbell Family Court Judge Rick Woeste won the prize for men’s closest to the pin on the long par 3, #6, while M+ Board Member, Judith Sarakatsannis won the women’s prize for closest on hole #8.

There was actually a tie for first place, with Kreb’s group winning a card playoff with an Eagle on 12 or 13. The price of admission included two $5 raffle tickets, a $5 split-the-pot ticket, and $5/man in the skins game. There are usually not too many skins in a scramble format, since there are so many birdies. And true to form, every birdie out there was “covered” or doubled. But, surprisingly, there were FOUR Eagles on the day for four skins. 128 golfers X $5 means that there was $640 to be won in split-the-pot money, or $160/skin. Kreb’s team won one on that back nine, and Marty Arnzen (a young scratch golfer) won one with his fiancée, Tamara Lorenzen, and soon-to-be father-in-law, Bruce Tabar, and even my son, John Foellger, one won with a chip-in on #7, with his friend, Justin Tunget, Rick Hoffman and Ed Wilbers.

There was also $640 in the split-the-pot drawing. Board member William Cole’s brother, Jeff Cole, won the $320 and promptly donated it all back to Mentoring Plus. Thank you, Jeff!