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Contest a benefit for kids Golf 'shootout' starts Thursday in Ashland By Vicki Guarino Three youth centers and thousands of kids from Butte Falls to Ashland will be the beneficiaries of a golf competition that starts this week. A $2 million hole-in-one "shootout" set for Thursday-Sunday at Stewart Meadows Driving Range in Medford will raise money for the Shack Teen Center, Medford, the newly opened Ashland Youth & Family Resource Center and the Butte Falls Teen Center. The small Butte Falls center, serving a community of several hundred, and the Shack, serving about 1,000 kids each month, will share equally in golf benefit proceeds. Organizer Debbie Wilson says she wants the centers to share the money because each provides important services and struggles financially to meet specific local needs. "My goal is to raise $30,000 or more," Wilson says. "That way we can give each club $10,000." All of the centers, she says, provide opportunities for youths to make friends, learn social and problem-solving skills, and have supervision in a recreational atmosphere. The centers are a break from the strictures of school, yet offer kids important lessons. "These aren't just hangouts," Wilson says. "This is where they learn those social skills, have relationships, learn what to do when things go wrong." In Butte Falls, the golf shootout money would be used to hire a staff person to relieve the burden on volunteers and give the year-old program greater consistency. In Ashland, the money would again go to staff, to provide specialized programs such as music and visual arts. At the Shack, specialized services to troubled kids could be funded. In all of the communities, the funding would add to locally driven services begun and operated by kids and their communities. The Shack, for instance, was started seven years ago by 13 kids. "They wanted to have a place to go," says Wilson, who helped that program get its start. The Ashland center, where Wilson now is the program manager, was the result of numerous communitywide meetings. The Butte Falls center was started by one Butte Falls student _ with help from her mother _ who wanted a recreation and gathering place for all of the town's kids. The community and businesses across the county contributed. Local support, says Ashland program deputy executive director Steve Groveman, is crucial to youth programs large and small. Although many such programs rely on large grants for funding, those grants aren't awarded unless the program can prove it has local support and local money. The shootout works much like a "closest-to-the-pin contest." The competition opens at 10 a.m. Thursday. Golfers will pay $1 per ball at the driving range, 1301 S. Holly St., for a shot at a special, 125-yard green. Every golfer who makes a hole-in-one, and the 30 players with the closest shots, will qualify for finals at 4 p.m. Sunday. Golfers who shoot a hole-in-one in the finals win the $2 million prize. If no gets a hole-in-one, the best shooter will receive a Mexico cruise. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA