Kristen Red-Horse was 14 – a teenager – so this summer was supposed to be different. It turned out to be exactly that, but not in the precise way Kristen had thought. After being out of school for only a few weeks, the days were already starting to drag. Kristen, fun-loving and athletic, was never one to sit around, so when her grandmother invited her to take a golf lesson with her, Kristen agreed. As an avid softball player, Kristen didn’t expect to be especially good at golf or to even like the game, but she took to it immediately. That may have had something to do with her natural athletic ability, but Kristen mostly credits her instructor. He had experience coaching kids and knew how to make the game fun. After a few lessons, he encouraged Kristen to join a program he coached called The First Tee®, more specifically The First Tee of Greater Sacramento. Kristen had certainly not planned to spend her summer playing golf, but the program sounded like fun. She discovered that The First Tee offered much more than just golf instruction when the other participants recited The First Tee Nine Core Values™: honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, respect, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy and judgment. Now this was something different. Through golf instruction, The First Tee was building character and developing life skills in its young participants. Over the next few years, The First Tee program taught Kristen the fundamentals of golf, helped her hone her skills, and established in her a love for game. Though Kristen greatly valued the golf lessons, it didn’t compare to the other things The First Tee provided her. Kristen found that she had greater confidence and was more self-assured, and she was certain that her coaches and friends from The First Tee truly cared about her and her future. When it came time for Kristen to apply to colleges, she had one prerequisite. She wanted to go to a school that had a chapter of The First Tee nearby. Now, however, she wouldn’t be a participant, she would be a volunteer. And once again The First Tee provided Kristen more than she could ever have anticipated. Through The First Tee Scholars Program™, Kristen earned a full four year scholarship to New York University (NYU) in New York City. In her second year at NYU, Kristen is currently studying journalism in hopes of one day becoming a sportscaster, but she is still as active as ever with The First Tee of Metropolitan New York. In fact, she is now training to become a coach of The First Tee. When Kristen thinks about The First Tee, she rarely considers the corporations, like Shell, that help make the program possible through their generous funding and support. Instead, she thinks about true friendships she has made and many enjoyable golf outings she has had. Mostly, though, she remembers the core values The First Tee has instilled in her. After all, those values are what made The First Tee so different and what changed a 14 year old girl forever. To learn more about The First Tee, visit  www.thefirsttee.org.
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