For $60 a year, you can play golf for the Sunnyside Blue Devils. Coach Orlando Rodriguez provides travel to a dozen events per season, free golf balls and the best instruction a history teacher with a 10-handicap can offer.
Best deal in town, right?
Then it all changes. A modest set of starter golf clubs is probably $400. Out-of-season play at the cheapest muni is at least $30 a day. Have you priced a golf bag? What about golf shoes?
And can you find even one friend of similar skill (or non-skill) to fill out a foursome and help overcome the intimidation factor you’ll feel at the first tee?
Then comes a bigger question: Where can you practice enough to go from shooting a 60 (that’s over nine holes) to a 40 or even a 35?
For 50 years, in which the Blue Devils have almost always finished last, the answer to those golf questions has been “no” and “nowhere.”
So Rodriguez asked the school district to fund a practice facility that would cost about $100,000. They didn’t even say no. They really didn’t say anything.
“They didn’t even put my request on the agenda,” he remembers. “Some people laughed at me for asking.”
When the Sunnyside school district passed an $88 million bond issue five years ago, it designated $10 million to sports, mostly for big-ticket items. Two basketball gymnasiums and the school’s historic wrestling facility were re-done. The tennis courts were resurfaced and made safe. The football stadium got a new scoreboard and bleachers.
Golf? C’mon, man.
Rodriguez persisted. He presented data showing that the district would ultimately save about $50,000 in transportation costs. The student golfers would not spend two hours a day on Interstate 19 traveling to their “home” course in Green Valley. That time could often be spent on school-related projects.
Rodriguez, the Star’s 1997 All-Southern Arizona place-kicker who earned a teaching degree at the UA while spending four seasons on Dick Tomey’s football team, would not go away.
“I’ve heard all the supposedly funny lines about the south-side kids, and that it’s impossible for them to learn how to play golf because it costs too much,” said Rodriguez. “When I became the golf coach (10 years ago), I wasn’t about to be a babysitter or a chauffeur. Our kids have pride, too.”
Finally, last weekend, the Blue Devils unveiled their little piece of golf paradise, a 5,600-square foot practice facility, a five-iron from Del Moral Street almost hidden behind tennis courts and a football practice field. Cost: $99,000.
Happy day.
The district believes it is one of just two golf facilities serving high-minority, low-income students in the United States.
It will be used by golfers from Desert View High School, by district middle-schoolers, by the Special Olympics and maybe even by the First Tee of Tucson program.
“This was all Orlando’s baby,” said Sunnyside teacher Nick Duddleston, the assistant golf coach. “He did all the work from beginning to end.”
Present and future Blue Devils and Desert View Jaguars will now be able to hit every conceivable shot, from wedge to driver, into a 30-foot high netting with five artificial turf tees. The chipping and putting facility is as good as those at Tucson’s top golf courses, and better than those at Randolph North and all five Tucson city courses.
It can be a game-changer.
Sunnyside’s mission isn’t to turn out golfers, but it is to provide a broad-based education for its students. At the beginner’s level, golf might be the most intimidating, expensive and time-intensive sport on the planet. That’s why so few Blue Devils played golf.
A lot of times the Blue Devils would ask one of Southern Arizona’s golf courses if it could get low-cost access during the prep golf season, August through October.
“You’d get, ‘Sunnyside? Sorry, we’re full,’” Rodriguez said. “Many of those doors have been closed to us. I wanted them open. Our kids didn’t have a chance to get better than the players who were already better than them. I wanted to change that.”
This year, when Blue Devil students were made aware of the new golf facility, interest and participation grew. Freshman Derek Ozbirn, a lefty who had rarely played golf, opened the year shooting 56 for the Blue Devils. In the season’s last meet, he shot a 38 at El Rio.
Freshman Genesis Cuellar, who doesn’t have her own golf clubs, opened the year shooting near 70. At year’s end she shot a 48.
“I’m asking my parents for woods for Christmas,” she said. “And I’m going to ask them for irons for my birthday.”
At Saturday’s grand opening, as part of a class project, Cuellar gave a speech to the district leaders about how golf is changing her life and her personality.
“Our goal now is to qualify our teams for the state tournament,” said Rodriguez. “No more excuses.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
