From intro to a story in
The Star-Ledger in NJ. In the picture, Upper Montclair Country Club head pro Michael Holiday (left, kneeling) says good-bye to Radcliffe Elementary School's Justin Andros.
To get up to High-Five Hill in the back of Radcliffe Elementary School in Nutley, there are exactly 50 stone steps. Some are in worse shape than others, but as he moved up each one on a muggy afternoon last July, Michael Holiday heard a familiar drumbeat behind him.
Golf! Golf! Golf! Golf! Golf!
Here comes Mike!
Mike! Mike! Mike! Mike! Mike!
Here comes golf!
Gonna hit a golf ball!
Golf! Golf! Golf! Golf! Golf!
It didn't come from the group of kids he was leading up to the field, it came from one child in particular, a boy named Alex. Like the rest of the young students, Alex has autism and wasn't there to take golf lessons. It didn't matter how far or how well they hit the ball. And as Holiday stopped on the steps as Alex trudged and chanted past him, the head pro at Upper Montclair Country Club in Clifton realized this day was about more than just golf.
"There was a young girl, and I don't know if she had spoken before, but there were some bigger challenges that she had, more than others," Holiday recalled recently. "One of the aides later on told me that her mother called up the school and was ecstatic that she shared her day of golf and her experience with the family.
"It very well could have been the first time in quite some time that she did speak, or it could have been the very first time. Whether or not it was one or the other, when the aide told me that, it was incredible."
Normally, summers at Upper Montclair include lessons, member-guest tournaments and exhaling from hosting the LPGA's Sybase Classic, which returns again this week. But for six weeks last year, Holiday and his staff would make the short drive to Nutley to work with Radcliffe's special learners class.
Radcliffe is part of a growing trend in schools, dedicating a wing for its nearly two dozen autistic learners. The numbers for the spectrum disorder -- autism affects individuals in different ways and to varying degrees -- have spiked in recent years. Nearly 1 in 150 children nationwide are affected, according to Autism New Jersey. In New Jersey, the ratio is much greater -- 1 in 94 children.
"The main purpose of our summer program is to maintain the skills that they learn throughout the year," said April Hauer, who is the Radcliffe psychologist and case manager. "A big part of it is focusing on life skills and social skills, because those are things that we all take for granted, but they have to learn very systematically. And the golf really leant itself to that."
The first day Holiday and his two assistant pros -- Nicholas Yaun and Kyongwon Koh -- were buzzed into Radcliffe, they almost immediately seized up with tension.
"I never had any experience with kids that have autism before," Koh said. "So I had no clue what we were walking into. I was kind of scared, too, because I wasn't sure if I would be able to communicate to them. But they were just like every other kid. They helped us learn."
When the folks at Upper Montclair Country Club were invited to work with the students at Radcliffe, almost every party involved had their concerns. Parents worried if their children would get anything out of "just swinging golf clubs." The teachers worried if sudden changes to the learning environment -- generally a major obstacle in autistic classrooms -- would set the students back. And the pros worried if they would even be able to impact the students.
Then slowly but surely, the students took to everything about their new friends.
"We were a little nervous at first," Radcliffe's principal, Michael Kearney, said. "They were asked to meet new people -- which is a big step. That usually doesn't work with children with autism. Then we were introducing new settings because we would be leaving the classroom to go to our playground area. ... When these kids don't like something or someone, you'll know."
But as the kids were given balls, tees, gloves and all sorts of other golf goodies, any tension began to melt away.
"You were offering them something that they didn't have prior to us being there," Yaun said.
From intro to a story in The Star-Ledger in NJ. In the picture, Upper Montclair Country Club head pro Michael Holiday (left, kneeling) says good-bye to Radcliffe Elementary School's Justin Andros.
