The third season of the JGAC will tee off Saturday and Sunday — assuming the weather cooperates — with a Spring Series tournament at Valley Hi Golf Course in Colorado Springs. There will be separate divisions for age groups 14-18, 11-13 and 10 & under.

Then the first JGAC Tour event — for the top junior golfers in Colorado — is scheduled for April 14-15 when the Country Club of Colorado in Colorado Springs hosts a Spring JGAC Tour tournament.

As always, the highlights of the season for the top competitors will be the four JGAC majors, the AJGA Hale Irwin Colorado Junior, the Boys and Girls Junior Americas Cup, and the USGA qualifying tournaments and championships themselves.

The AJGA Hale Irwin Colorado Junior, which features a field including national and international players plus plenty of Coloradans, will return to Walnut Creek Golf Preserve in Westminster, with the championship rounds set for June 5-7.

For the first time in 18 years, Colorado will be home to the Girls Junior Americas Cup, where many of the top players from the western U.S., Canada and Mexico will compete. Hiwan Golf Club in Evergreen and the JGAC will host the event, with championship rounds scheduled for July 25-27. The boys JAC is set for July 24-26 in Anaconda, Mont.

And here’s the lineup for the four JGAC majors:

— June 11-13: Colorado Junior PGA Championship, Eisenhower GC Blue Course in Colorado Springs.

— July 9-11: Colorado Junior Amateur, Todd Creek GC in Thornton.

— July 30-Aug. 1: Colorado Junior Match Play, Plum Creek GC in Castle Rock.

— Oct. 6-7: JGAC Tour Championship, Denver Country Club.

As for USGA championship qualifying, both the qualifiers for the U.S. Junior Amateur and the U.S. Girls’ Junior are scheduled for June 26, with the boys at Buffalo Run in Commerce City and the girls at Colorado National in Erie.

Both of the JGAC Players of the Year are set to return this summer, with Davis Bryant of Aurora and Hailey Schalk of Erie gearing up for another big year.

To access the full schedule for the 2018 JGAC tournament season, CLICK HERE.

Meanwhile, for JGAC introductory members, there will be six JGAC Experience events that will give kids a taste for different aspects of the game while providing professional instruction. There will also be 9-Hole Play Days from late May to late July. For the dates of those events, CLICK HERE.

There will also be Drive, Chip & Putt competitions, PGA Junior League, and many other events and activities. To go to the JGAC website, CLICK HERE.

Schalk, the 3A girls state high school champion who won last week’s AJGA Hale Irwin Colorado Junior by Transamerica, picked up where she left off by starting with a 1-under-par 71 in the first of four Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado majors for 2017. The 15-year-old made four birdies and three bogeys on Monday.

Amelia Lee of Castle Rock, who placed third in last month’s 5A state high school tournament, holds down second place in the girls competition at 73. Josie Baker of Sherman Oaks, Calif., is third at 75.

In the boys tournament, Bryant (pictured), a 2015 U.S. Junior Amateur qualifier who won the JGAC Todd Creek tournament by nine strokes last month, fired a 2-under-par 70 on Monday after a five-birdie round.

Dillon Stewart of Fort Collins and Ian Thorpe of Superior share second place at 72, each highlighting his round with an eagle. Thorpe played his final seven holes in 4 under par. TJ Shehee of Mead holds fourth place at 73.

The 54-hole tournaments will continue through Wednesday.

The top two finishers in both the boys and girls fields will qualify for the national Junior PGA Championships at the Country Club of St. Albans near St. Louis, set for July 18-21 (girls) and July 31-Aug. 3 (boys).

For scores from the Colorado Junior PGA, click on the following: BOYS, GIRLS.
 

“Our beginning year we were hoping to shoot, using a golf analogy, 1 or 2 over par,” Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Alan Abrams, the president of the JGAC and the director of golf at Indian Tree Golf Club, said at the recent CWGA Annual Meeting. “But we had an incredible sub-par round and ended up winning the tournament. Exciting things happened for us that first year.”

But one thing about setting a high bar is that it’s a formidable standard to meet going forward. That’s the situation that faces the JGAC as it begins season 2 in 2017. The second-year activities have already started with the kickoff last Sunday of the “Off-Season Education Series.” And next weekend (April 8-9) will mark the first JGAC tournaments of the year as a Tour event is planned for the Country Club of Colorado in Colorado Springs and a Spring Series tournament for Pueblo Country Club.

All told, there are about 119 competitions planned for this year, a total which includes Drive Chip & Putt qualifiers but not PGA Junior League events. That’s up a whopping 35 percent from last year’s total.

“I credit the (Colorado) PGA for this,” said CGA managing director of operations Dustin Jensen, a director of the JGAC along with Colorado PGA assistant executive director Keith Soriano. “We have the super-competitive events (for top-level players) covered. We didn’t need more of those tournaments. Where we needed to grow was to engage other junior golfers — not just the high end, but everybody.”

Which led to the decision to create a JGAC Prep League, a pilot program that ideally will include 27 events in 2017, mostly from mid-August to the beginning of October. The idea is that these events would offer competitive opportunities to junior varsity-level golfers and players who haven’t had the chance to compete much. (The fall is the boys prep golf season and the JGAC will partner with high schools in this endeavor).

Another addition to the JGAC agenda this year is a Western Slope swing during the tournament season. A total of six events will be held in western Colorado:

— June 6 at Vail Golf Club.

— June 28 at Battlement Mesa Golf Club.

— July 16 at Willow Creek Par-3 in Eagle-Vail, a team event.

— July 17-18 at Gypsum Creek GC and Eagle Ranch GC, a two-day event.

— July 19 at Bookcliff Country Club in Grand Junction.

— And Aug. 5-6 at Tiara Rado Golf Course in Grand Junction, the Western Junior Championship, which takes the place of the old Daily Sentinel Western Chapter Junior Championship.

“We really made a concerted effort to get events in western Colorado,” Jensen said. “We had the rest of the state covered. We have a huge contingent of kids — probably 30 — who come over from West Slope to play in our events. We needed to make an effort to reach out to them and have some events over there.”

Another new wrinkle this year is a “spring points chase”. The top three boys and top three girls in the points standings after three spring Tour events will earn spots in the AJGA Hale Irwin Colorado Junior by Transamerica that’s being hosted by Walnut Creek Golf Preserve (the former Heritage at Westmoor) June 6-8.

And, of course, there’s always a focus on the JGAC majors — the de facto Grand Slam events for junior golf in Colorado, both on the boys and girls side. This year they’re set for Eisenwhower Golf Club at the Air Force Academy (Colorado Junior PGA June 12-14), Legacy Ridge Golf Course in Westminster (Colorado Junior Amateur July 10-12), Black Bear Golf Club in Parker (Colorado Junior Match Play July 31-Aug. 2), and Cherry Hills Country Club (JGAC Tour Championship Oct. 7-8).

The boys and girls Junior America’s Cup competitions also fall under the auspices of the JGAC. This year, the boys tournament is July 25-27 in Dupont, Wash., while the girls tourney is set for Aug. 1-3 in Henderson, Nev.

Beyond tournaments and competitions, another addition this year is the aforementioned Off-Season Education Series, taught by highly regarded instructors and top experts in a given field.

The series includes four sessions in the spring, starting last weekend with the keys to practice and the mental game. And there will be several more in the fall.

Other sessions in the spring are entitled The Road to College Golf (Sunday, led by many of the NCAA Division I head coaches in Colorado); Performance on the Course and in the Gym (April 23, led by Elena King and Dee Tidwell); and Focus on the Short Game (May 7, led by Jerry Walters and Doug Wherry).

For more information about the Off-Season Education Series, CLICK HERE.

All told, JGAC officials are anticipating a 10 percent increase in membership this season compared to 2016.
 

Following in the footsteps of Briena Goldsmith (who has since returned to North Dakota) and Dustin Jensen (who has had two stints with the CGA sandwiched around more than three years back in North Dakota), Ashley Barnhart is the latest addition to the CGA staff from N.D.

After two straight summers serving as an intern for the association — and plenty of part-time work over this past fall, winter and spring — Barnhart went full-time on May 9, two days after graduating from the University of Jamestown (N.D.). And, as was the case last summer during her internship, she’ll be devoted to junior tournaments, now as the manager of junior competitions.

That’s right up Barnhart’s alley in several respects as she was a former high school and college golfer in North Dakota, she just received her B.A. degree in Education, and she loves working with kids.

“I always thought that I wanted to teach in a classroom, but with my internship I learned that I don’t have to be in a conventional classroom to be an educator,” Barnhart said recently. “Being down here, I was like, ‘Oh there are other ways I can connect with kids and connect with juniors that don’t require me to teach in a conventional classroom.’

“I hit the point of realization where I was like, ‘Why can’t every golf course in the state be my classroom?’ and ‘Why can’t every junior program be my classroom?’ You have the same ability to influence kids. So that’s the part of this job that I’m really excited about — being able to influence kids in a way that I never knew was possible until my internship.”

In her new role, Barnhart will be working extensively alongside the Colorado PGA — and her counterpart there, Holly Champion, the junior golf director at the CPGA — in running events that fall under the umbrella of the new Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado that the CGA and the Section co-founded.

And given that JGAC is overseeing more than 80 events in 2016, Barnhart, Champion and company figure to be plenty busy this golf season.

“Starting Tuesday (May 31), we’ve got tournaments (just about) every day until August,” Barnhart noted. “It’s going to be crazy. It’s going to be a lot of being on the course, administering the tournaments, as well as doing the communication beforehand — connecting with golf courses, players, processing registrations, all of that.”

Barnhart believes the collaboration with the Colorado PGA for the JGAC will benefit junior players.

“The way I like to sum it up is you take two things that are already good and you put them together and you make something that’s great,” she said. “You essentially double your staff, you double your experience. And the experiences that they (the Colorado PGA) have are very different than the experiences we have. So when we come together and work together, it’s going to be something that’s great. I don’t think our roles are going to change very much necessarily. It’s just a matter of figuring out who is best at what and who has the expertise in what areas so we can make it the best it can be.”

Though Barnhart has played golf since she was about 5 years old, and competitive golf since the eighth grade, she said there was nothing like what the JGAC is doing in Colorado when she was growing up in North Dakota.

“Junior golf does not exist like this in North Dakota,” she said. “So coming down here that first summer, it was like, ‘This is pretty neat.’ This is what I love. I love waking up, seeing the smiling faces on the kids in the morning, helping them get around the golf course, and closing it out at the end of the day. It’s great. I love it. It’s a cool classroom.

“I love being around the kids. The energy that they have is so different than anything that you (experience).”

Though Barnhart self-deprecatingly says “I’ve got kids out here in all age divisions who could beat me on any given day,” during her time as a competive golfer, she helped her Kenmare High School team claim the 2010 “B” state title in her sophomore year. Then last year, as a junior at Jamestown and while Jensen was coaching both the women’s and men’s teams, the Jimmies qualified for the Women’s NAIA National Championships for the first time.

Though Barnhart didn’t play her final semester of college golf this spring as she was student teaching a K-1 combination class in Aurora, she was named an NAIA Women’s Golf Scholar-Athlete for the second straight year.

Notably, Barnhart got her foot in the door for a full-time position at the CGA when then-director of junior competitions Eric Wilkinson moved to the upper Midwest — Minneapolis specifically — in February 2015. Barnhart said Jensen, now the CGA’s managing director of operations, told her about the opening and she jumped at the opportunity, which turned into a full staff job straight out of college.

“I’ve kind of always felt like a full-time staff person, but knowing that I have that responsibility and knowing that I have the opportunity to give kids the same opportunity to play golf I’ve had is really cool,” she said.