Davenport Country Club hopes to open doors for aspiring youth caddies

Summer break offers many high schoolers the time to work longer hours and gives many their first taste of joining the work force. For some that means becoming a waiter at a local restaurant, a barista at their favorite coffee shop, serving up delicious ice cream or even becoming a youth caddie at the Davenport Country Club.

About 20 kids in the area have spent this summer walking the golf course at the Davenport Country Club golf course. Other than getting exercise and enjoying the time outside, being a youth caddie can open doors for students’ futures they may not have expected.

The Davenport Country Club, the Western Golf Association and the Evans Scholar Foundation have worked together to start a caddie program that would help qualify those high school caddies for the Evan’s Scholarship. The scholarship covers college tuition and housing for four years at 28 colleges throughout the country.

Along with being part of the caddie program, the requirements are to have a financial need, show good leadership and get good grades during the school year. This year, just about 400 students will receive the scholarship. Since the foundation started in 1930, they have provided about 13,000 scholarships.

“This absolutely changed my life,” said Tim Conrad, a WGA director, Evan Scholar Alumni, and a member at DCC. “I wouldn’t have gone to a four-year institution.”

“College was not in the cards, so, looking back 30 years, it opened doors that would not have been open to me,” said Matt Blaylock, a WGA volunteer director for the Evan Scholar Foundation and an Evan Scholar Alumni, as well.

The DCC started their youth caddie program in 2022. Now they’re working to develop good, qualified candidates from around the community for the Evans Scholarship.

“This could save my parents from debt for a while,” said Logan Roux, a caddie working his second summer on the bag. “My mom’s parents are still paying off her college debt, and this would be great to send me to college and pay for my housing and school.”

Even though not every caddie will be able to earn the scholarship, that isn’t the limit of the opportunity and knowledge that caddies can get from just a couple of months carrying clubs for members, cleaning golf balls, fixing divots and raking the bunkers. Blaylock says they can learn and work on their interpersonal communication skills.

“Learn when to speak, when to be quiet, when to add encouragement and when not to, to your player,” said Blaylock. “Some of those things that just translate into the business world and beyond.”

Each time a caddie heads out for a round with a group of golfers, they get about four hours of one-on-one time with successful people in the community.

“It’s more of a mentoring role for our members to help these kids out, get them out on the course, talk to them and let’s build them up,” said Conrad.

Roux says the talk during the round rarely ever stays focused on the golfing at hand. They often learn about each other’s lives, and it gives the members an opportunity to give advice to the high schoolers with their whole lives ahead of them.

“I almost form a little bond with them, because I see them out here again and they’ll recognize me, they’ll say hi,” said Roux. “It actually helps cause maybe they’ll take me out again and it gives me good connections.”

Adam Soczka manages the caddies at the country club. He says it is not necessary for students applying for the job to know much about golf. In fact, many of the caddies this summer had never been on a golf course before taking the job. They go through all the basics during training to get the caddies ready to work hard, sweat, talk, and enjoy the outdoors.

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