Breaking Cultural Stigmas in Golf: A Rhetorical Audit of Minority Engagement with the First Tee of Silicon Valley
Advisor: Hansen
Internship Location: First Tee Silicon Valley HQ, Rancho Del Pueblo Golf Course, Gavilan College Golf Course
Onsite Mentor: George Maxe, CEO, The First Tee of Silicon Valley
My name is Diyaan Mehta, and I'm exploring minority engagement with the game of golf post-pandemic. Riding off the coattails of a pandemic boom that saw a significant bump in Hispanic and African-American golfers, my goal is to discover why that boom is permanent and what is attracting historically excluded demographics to the sport. Part of my hypothesis is the rise of inclusive youth groups that provide an affordable gateway into the game, which is why I am interning with the leading golf education group in the United States, The First Tee, to further analyze their effect on minority engagement.
Using a methodology that primarily consists of audio-based interviews with minority parents, coaches, junior volunteers, board members, and participants (if given permission and consent), I hope to discover what the personal reasons for getting involved in the sport are, what role the First Tee or other organizations played in that attraction, and what can be improved in the golf education community to bring more students in the community.
Working between First Tee HQ and Rancho del Pueblo Golf Course to conduct interviews for the Hispanic demographic, I also hope to expand the scope of this project to the African-American community, going outside of the Bay Area to get those perspectives. As a final product, I plan on producing a research paper that provides a robust explanation on the main attraction factors of minority students to these programs, and why this boom isn't simply because of the pandemic's circumstances.
Project Blog
Week 1: Reevaluation and Logistics
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the amazing world of golf! I'm sure if you had to translate golf into a person, it would be a cigarette-smoking, beyond-rich, retired white man. To be honest, if we went back even fifty years ago, you would probably be right. But in the modern game, especially post-pandemic, the average golfer represents the opposite traits of your depiction: working, middle-class, and — most important to this project — not white. My question is as simple as "why". Why has the average golfer changed so drastically in a game that has prioritized being reserved for the elite since the lords of Scotland created it in the 1500s? More importantly, why have those who have been deterred from the sport for centuries trickled in over the last fifteen years?
When doing my initial literature review for this topic, I'd see one consistent answer come up: the undeniable impact of Tiger Woods as a role model to millions of black and brown kids worldwide. In fact, his 1997 Masters win was so instrumental to the introduction of minority golfers to the sport that a "Tiger Effect" was dubbed as the reason that thousands of young African-Americans entered the sport. His stardom alongside the natural effects of the pandemic were supposed to be fleeting moments of minority interest. Instead, we are seeing over 25% of golfers coming from these communities, a prolonged resurgence of a game that has had an "elitist" tag associated with it for centuries. Beyond these reasons, however, my hypothesis centers around the impact of youth-development programs and their work to make sure that the students who enter the sport continue for years afterwards.
That's why I've decided to intern with the First Tee of Silicon Valley, one of the biggest chapters of the largest golf and youth development organization in the United States. I've been a participant in their program for over a decade and a junior coach with them since my freshman year, giving me the rapport to investigate my hypothesis through an interview-centric methodology. I plan on discovering the leading causes of this heightened minority engagement and retention with the First Tee and golf as a whole through an interview process with their network: students, junior coaches, volunteers, parents, and board members. Using a variety of closed and open-ended questions, I hope to gain some sort of trend for why certain interviewees will have certain answers, but I also intend to make each story I hear unique in the overall cohesive result I get.
While my first week consisted of some initial literature review on interview protocol and the initial setups for how I'll conduct my interviews at Rancho del Pueblo and Gavilan College Golf Course, there will be more to come as the First Tee season resumes and I can collect some answers to my questions.
Week 2: The Art of Interviewing
Hello everyone, and welcome back to my blog! The story of my week is soft skills, and learning what it takes to be a successful interviewer. I'm in an abnormal situation with my Senior Project in the sense that I can't start my data collection until the start of the First Tee spring season, meaning that I have until March 21st to put all the pieces in place to maximize my collection time. A primary step in my preparation is interview etiquette and protocol, and that means getting into what's worked in the past. A large majority of my project will focus on the Latino demographic, especially considering their prevalence in the program in East San Jose and Gilroy. That's why the majority of my research into the art of interviewing was heavily geared towards Latino outreach, and one of the best resources I could find on the subject came from Liliana Vega's 2016 paper titled “Best Practices for Outreach and Engagement to Latino Audiences Using Community-Based Programs." (1).
For my project specifically, I feel like my primary challenge will be finding participants for these interviews, especially since most of my target interviewee demographic likely wants to drop their kid off at golf class and leave. The attraction element, according to Vega, must stem from what I suspect youth development groups like the First Tee have been employing: comfort. In her paper, she highlights many different attraction and retention techniques when working with Latino communities, and one that I find relevant to my interview process would be a combination of convenience and passion. Especially in an area where a significant amount of the Latino population doesn't fully understand English, The First Tee has aimed to close that gap by introducing a Latino Outreach Program. I've been lucky enough to work with them recently, and if necessary, that translation through a bilingual mediator will be the first that I offer to my participants. If my goal is to maximize my potential participants, that bilingual factor is crucial to the first step of retention.
Additionally, Vega points out the trait of corazón — passion and heart — as a key part of what engages the Latino community. She describes it as a tenet of trust & relationship building within this demographic, something that I feel every interviewer should strive for in their discussions. My interpretation of that suggestion is that these interviews should keep the unique story of each participant front and center, even if it means straying away from my intent slightly. I feel like striking a balance between a job interview and a casual discussion is a challenging skill to master, because it means sacrificing the general motive of the conversation to make the interviewee feel as comfortable as possible. After speaking with Mr. Hansen and members within the First Tee, I feel like that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, as it will already be a big ask to get these participants to open up in the first place. Asking open-ended questions and digging deeper into the nuances of each person's entry into golf will trump quantitative questions in my interviews, and I think it will add a sense of trust to the discussion that could yield fruit later on.
Overall, interviews are hard. We're talking about approaching people out of the blue, asking them potentially sensitive questions about their entry into a historically oppressive sport, and expecting them to open up like I'm a person they can wholeheartedly trust. I understand it won't be perfect — some may become unresponsive, agitated, and even shut down the conversation entirely — but I hope that these two elements, alongside all of my preparation, can minimize those challenges as much as possible. While my Senior Project has started slowly, it will pick up significantly after my first day of interviews on March 21st, so I encourage all of you to stick around until then to see if my preparation will actually work when it matters. Thanks for reading!
Vega, Liliana, et al. “Best Practices for Outreach and Engagement to Latino Audiences Using Community-Based Programs.” Journal of Human Sciences and Extension, 30 June 2016, https://doi.org/10.54718/mbeq5252. Accessed 12 Aug. 2022.
Week 3: Meet the Interviewees
Hello, and welcome back to the blog! This was the last week of preparation for me ahead of the start of the season for First Tee, and my first opportunity to gather some data. That's why the majority of my work this week was making sure that I was as prepared as possible for that Saturday, and I broke that down into two main parts: who are the interviewees, and what will I even ask them?
First of all, it's not as simple as saying, "so, as a Latino participant, how has First Tee excelled at getting you and your community into the sport?" Why, you may ask? After all, it would save me from having to dance around the point I'm actually trying to get to. The answer boils down to bias. If I sat down and asked you who your favorite teacher is, while also adding, "by the way, this is all for a survey we're doing for a Mr. Tariq appreciation video," you would be heavily inclined to answer with Mr. Tariq. After consulting Mr. Hansen and the First Tee team, the biggest thing to avoid is letting people know what the purpose of the interview is.
This thinking is supplemented by Vanja Erčulj and Ajda Šulc's 2024 study Swayed by Leading Questions, which determines that people, especially strangers whom you haven't built a relationship with beyond the scope of the interview, naturally want to please you and the ulterior agenda of your interview. Additionally, they note that adolescents, a significant chunk of my interviewees, are especially susceptible to this kind of guidance, making any leading question that reveals an agenda a liability. Thus, any indication that I'm trying to lead them in a certain direction is considered tampering and false data in my book.
To deter this, all of my outreach tactics have been deliberately ambiguous about the purpose of the interview. After working with the First Tee to build up a mailing list of potential junior coaches, I made sure to keep the information limited to who I'm looking for and what they need to do. While I think that may make people a little skeptical of sitting down with me and talking about something they don't fully know about, I believe that it has to be done for the soundness of the experiment.
A large part of this week was focused on outreach, and figuring out how I'm going to get my interviews in the first place. Outside of my immediate network of people who fit my criteria, reaching out during parent pick-up/drop-off has been the strategy that I've planned on doing. However, especially with how limited I need to be in my advertisement, I think that strategy won't be as fruitful as I hope. So, my question to you, my amazing readers (who probably need a question to ask me), is about what other strategies I can use to get interviewees? Furthermore, should I focus primarily on the junior coach/participant age group, or try and seek out adult coaches, board members, and parents who would have a more detailed perspective? As I approach the first data collection date, those are the two questions that I still have gaps in.
Regardless, the upcoming week is set to be my biggest one yet, and I look forward to telling you all about it in next week's edition!
Week 4: Interviews With a Side of Rejection
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the blog! I've just gotten back from the golf course after a day of coaching and interviewing, and I wanted to share my initial thoughts while they're still fresh in my mind.
First of all, outreach is... hard. If you've ever wondered how those Costco employees feel asking if you want to learn about their new Verizon plan, trust me... it's not great. However, I chose to do this, so I put myself through every awkward rejection in the book. In the midst of all of that, though, I was lucky enough to sit down with five interviewees, who made all of the rejection somewhat worth it.
While the majority of my interviewees were Latino today, I had an interesting conversation with a white coach about his thoughts on minority rise, just to see what his opinions were on the outside of the phenomenon. Consistent with my initial assumptions, he attributed the majority of the recent success golf is seeing among minorities to the pandemic effect, especially regarding the influx of minority golfers that First Tee has seen in post-pandemic seasons. While I'd agree with his eye test, my work next week will hopefully revolve around the demographic data that confirms these assumptions with actual statistics from pre and post pandemic seasons.
An unexpected initial trend, however, was that the Latino community found golf to be the sport most aligned with their values. In more than one instance during this week's interviews, I heard that the ability to build relationships while playing your sport is something that resonates with the values and cultures built in the Latino community. In one of my first interviews, a Latino First Tee participant — who had only gotten into the game this past fall — said that, as excluded as his community was from the game, it was actually the sport that he feels like they'd enjoy the most. In his words:
[My biggest selling point to them would be] imagining driving around a big golf course in a golf cart with your friends, drinking a cold one while hitting balls, and even if you don't hit good, you can still live in the moment with others.
Multiple people talked about how the camaraderie of golf was a breath of fresh air compared to the isolation of a sport like basketball. One noted that even though golf is an individual sport, you feel like a part of a group when playing with strangers or friends. In comparison to a team sport like basketball, even if you hit a big three, your job is to get back on defense rather than celebrate. Finding community in random tee times strongly resonates with these minority groups, who are seeking connection in everything that they do.
However, some have admitted that this goal to find community sometimes backfires, especially in a sport which many agree is still riddled with prejudice and discrimination. When speaking to a lead coach from Sacramento, he described the unsettling middle ground between full respect from his playing partners and outright prejudice. On multiple occasions, he mentioned, other golfers changed their tee times when they realized they were playing with a Latino golfer, or seemed selectively distant in favor of speaking to his white counterparts. Especially because we've now determined that this social connection is a driving factor to get this community into the sport, this common feeling that there's a subtle element of prejudice following them onto the course is often enough to deter them from coming back.
But, obviously, they are coming back, or this project would be completely useless. I think if I had to summarize this week, it would be about understanding the failures that the sport has committed that have deterred millions from joining the game firsthand. However, as much as my interviewees brought up the failures, they had their own solutions. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a topic for next week. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to writing up the next edition.
Week 5: Translating Through the Data
Hello, and welcome back to the blog! If you remember from last week, I started my interview process on Saturdays at the golf course, beginning the experiment with my immediate network of coaches and volunteers. Especially after getting a lot of rejections in the last week, I figured that I had to try something different to find an interview group. So, with the help of my internship advisor, I approached Lena, First Tee's head of Latino outreach, to bypass some of the 'Costco employee' rejections I'd been facing. While I did conduct an interview with her, I was also able to get her help in identifying my next batch of interviewees, who could provide a different perspective from the somewhat redundant experiences that I heard from teenage coaches.
I was immediately able to reap the benefits of this strategy shift, as I completed multiple interviews across the course of the day with Lena's help. The major difference, this time, was that I had to interview in Spanish. Now, while I can ask my questions with an adequate pronunciation and understand the majority of the Spanish answers, I know that I probably shouldn't rely on my high school Spanish proficiency. Thus, Lena was nice enough to act as my translator after doing her interview, and she introduced me to the Hispanic regulars who volunteered with the program on Saturdays.
The first big thing that I noticed while conducting these interviews is that, contrary to my assumptions, the majority of them passionately wanted to speak to me. While I could feel like the conversation was naturally dying with some earlier participants around the 7-minute mark, these parents continued on for fifteen or even twenty minutes, talking about their children and how they've found a new home within golf and the First Tee. In fact, Lena told me that when she recently did two outreach sessions in Alum Rock (one in English and one in Spanish), she couldn't finish the Spanish presentations because parents would constantly start discussions about their children midway through the segment. That passion, even if it was hidden behind a Spanish barrier, is exactly the type of interviewee I've been searching for, and I'm excited to work with her in the coming weeks to hear as many of these stories as possible.
Especially with the parent perspective, I'm learning that attraction to the First Tee and golf in general is much more decentralized than I initially thought. In my first blog post, I talked a lot about the Tiger effect, but these interviews have demonstrated that the current influx can't be attributed to one person or event. The 'role models' and influences aren't the guys we see on tour -- it's the next-door neighbor, community leader, or even their own kids who make these parents give golf a try. Many of the parents who I spoke to talked about their community's introduction to the game being gradual, with one person spreading First Tee to the next person, and so on. If anything, this idea of a single moment getting people on the golf course is something I can confidently debunk. While the reasoning isn't so concrete, I can determine that the influx we're seeing today is just a result of years of slow interest bubbling to the surface.
As I continue my interviews, both in Spanish and English, and get access to the demographic data, I hope that all of these ideas that I have will only have more evidence to back them up. Thanks so much, and tune in next week!
Week 6: Reevaluation 2.0
Hey everyone, and welcome back! We're now entering the dull period of the Senior Project: just week after week of data collection that (I'll be honest), is a lot of the same opinions and points, even from different types of interviewees. With that in mind, I'll try to cut through the noise and give you the most common trends I see, as well as some interesting points that have been raised in the last week or so.
The first thing that jumps off the page is that these groups talk about First Tee like a sanctuary. Over the past few weeks, I closed off every interview by asking the same question: 'If First Tee didn't exist, would you ever find yourself on a golf course?' The answers: absolutely not. No way. From what I've seen, hearing multiple first-gen, low-income Latino interviewees, the sport itself is secondary to the program and its values. And it makes sense: especially for a lot of these first-gen golfers who have recently moved from Mexico or other parts of Latin America, the First Tee works as a place to meet others in the same situation and mingle with them. A volunteer told me that, in addition to helping out the program and staying close to their children while they golf, a main reason I'll see a lot of Latino volunteers on Saturday mornings is that they're trying to meet new people in their community. This mingling space is what gets people into the program, and then in turn, fall in love with the game.
One outlier that I noticed came from a head coach that I interviewed, who said that he thinks that the game has become more accessible because of the little things that courses are starting to allow. From leniency on collared shirts to no additional caddie fees, he claims that courses are breaking down the barriers that deter people who are already skeptical about the sport. At least from my own experience, municipal golf courses that allow these changes are providing a whole different dynamic to the same sport, providing a gateway for a more casual game for people who are just getting into it.
In my first blog, I started with a reevaluation: changing my focus from strictly a post-pandemic perspective to a more general one at the recommendation of my internship advisor. Six weeks in, and I'm ready to make another reevaluation: switching my findings away from any quantitative insights to strictly qualitative. Initially, I thought that I would be able to say that x% of Latino parents feel one way while y% feel a different way. As I've realized recently, each story is very nuanced, and grouping the reasons into categories wouldn't be fair to the interviewee's experience or the soundness of my experiment. It's also become clear that the number of interviews that I end up completing won't be high enough to make a quantitative conclusion, because, regardless of the depth of each interview, 20 interviews is not a respectable sample size for quantitative research. So in this second reframe, I want to switch my project to a strictly qualitative analysis, coming from the perspective of: 'here's 20-something stories I've heard, and here's the insights that I can make from piecing together different parts of their journeys."
This is no longer a project about numbers, but about stories that together provide the reasons why these communities are finally giving golf a chance. That's all I got, and I'll see you guys next week!
Week 7: Discrepancies
Hello, and welcome back to the blog! This week saw some ups.... and a lot of downs. Starting with the good news: after some digging, First Tee was finally able to provide me with the participant data over the last four years since they started working with Salesforce. This included participant data that could be filtered by their three locations (East San Jose, Gilroy, and Palo Alto), age groups, and, most importantly to us, demographics. My plan with this data was to cross-reference the demographic data that I got from the company with the demographic representation in the greater Santa Clara County, as this is the most specific records that would account for all three locations. The point of this was to see how First Tee is doing relative to the overall numbers and how much work they still have to achieve a more balanced class.
The data showed some expected trends and some unexpected ones. Of course, we're seeing a drop-off in white participants since the end of COVID, with around a 2-3% decrease in the last four years (barring an outlier year in 2023). That's in line with the ~10% overall decrease that the white demographic has seen in Santa Clara County, dropping from around 52% to a low of 39% in 2024. It's important to note that golf is undeniably still a white sport, and the leveling out of demographic representation will likely take years to show up on the youth level. With the exception of South County classes at Gavilan Golf Course, that decrease can be seen across the majority of age groups and locations, but it should be treated less as the dwindling of white involvement in the sport and more as proof of the gradual minority increase.
The discrepancies start becoming clearer when we shift over to the Latino demographic. Over the past four years, the Latino participation numbers across all three locations have deviated by only ~1.5%, with an average representation of 13.9%. Comparing those numbers to the county records, we can see that the Latino makeup of Santa Clara County has been 25% during those years. Given that there's been no change to the county-wide represenation of Latinos, it would almost seem like the gateway into golf has stagnated for the demographic, given the lack of movement in participation numbers. However, everyone whom I've talked to who got involved through outreach, including the Latino Outreach director, agrees that, especially in places like Alum Rock and East San Jose, their outreach event numbers continue to rise. At events like Parent University, which is First Tee's biggest prospective parent event of the year, they're seeing more Latinos with each passing year. So the question now becomes, what is stopping those people from becoming First Tee members? Why can't First Tee convert prospective parents into consistent participants?
For the remaining interviewees I have, I think my best course of action is to ask about optimization. What was one thing that was holding them back from the program that might have deterred some prospective parents? What can First Tee do to fix that? Is First Tee doing its outreach to its fullest potential? At the core of this project, it's meant to be an audit and a recommendation to the nonprofit about what's going on with their Latino community and how they can expand it, so those are questions that I think will really benefit that objective.
That's what I had for this week. Stay tuned as I wrap up interviews and start the paper!
Week 8: Everything in a Nutshell
Hello, and welcome back to the blog! This was the final week of data collection, partially because of my own schedule but more so due to the lack of interviewees. This past Saturday was the first week when my interviews dried up, mostly because the network that my translator provided was exhausted. In the end, I've conducted 10 sit-down conversations with parents, coordinators, and coaches. These conversations have revolved around what First Tee can do to make the program more appealing to the Latino demographic, as well as discussing what they've done right to retain them in the first place. With this week being the transition phase from data collection to paper writing for the final product, I thought I'd summarize 3 key findings for a TLDR of the last seven blogs. Basically, these are my project's results in a nutshell:
Golf means different things to different groups, but the biggest selling point to Latinos is community. Once many get past the initial stage of uncertainty in the sport, they keep coming back because they enjoy the leisure time within the game and the fun with their playing partners. First Tee is an extension of that, as parents and participants build friendships and communities within their classes.
Accessibility has been on the rise since the pandemic in ways many people might overlook, the biggest of which is the attire and lax course rules. At many municipal and public courses, dress codes have become less of a priority, ranges have become social circles to some extent, and a more casual vibe has been introduced. Of course, this isn't the case for every course, but the additional barriers of uptightness are starting to unravel.
First Tee has become a community meeting spot. Many new immigrants find themselves coming to the program through the fee waiver initiatives and meeting with others in the exact same position. They've said they found it ironic that they've met so many others in the same situation through such an expensive sport, but that's something that I've found First Tee really excels at doing - introducing communities to a world they thought they couldn't join.
The next weeks are going to be presentations and final product grinds, but it's good to finally get over the hump of the challenging research. Thanks, and I'll see you next week!
Week 9: How to Write a Paper
Hello, and welcome back to the blog! Now that we've gotten past the research phase, the next step is the product. For my project, that's a research paper on my findings. Most papers in this program are often filled with numerical calculations, derivations, and some sort of quantitative analysis. However, given that my project is 90% qualitative, I need to determine how I can make my findings academic beyond the somewhat casual results that I talk about on this blog. So without further ado, this is my paper outline.
What is the question, and why is it important?
This has changed at least a few times over the course of the project, but here's my final objective. Minority interest in golf has risen significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, with many initially joining due to it being a sport where you can get physical exercise without contact. However, that rise we saw has persisted well into the decade, despite golf being a historically discriminatory game built on hierarchy and prejudice. My question, plainly put, is simple: why is this the case? Why are people continuing to get involved in a sport that has spent centuries excluding them? Being in the Bay Area, I've focused my project specifically on the Latino demographic.
2) What's the methodology, and how did I get my data?
The main methodology of this project was nine sit-down interviews conducted during the spring season of First Tee at Rancho del Pueblo Golf Course in East San Jose. My interviewees included four Latino parents, two junior coaches, two paid instructors, and First Tee's Latino Outreach coordinator, a deliberate mix designed to capture as many different perspectives as possible. As you've read, I definitely had some issues with getting interviews with substance, but once I shifted to the sit-down interviews, I was able to cut the earlier interviews and only use these as part of my insights. Three of those nine interviews required Spanish translation, requiring me to use an interpreter. Additionally, I was able to use First Tee's demographic data over the past four years to build a pattern of Latino participation in the post-pandemic era.
3) What were the findings?
I had three major findings that I want to discuss in the paper:
A) The appeal of community, and what that means to different types of golfers. Kids found community within their classes and the slow-paced environment that combines socializing and competition. Meanwhile, parents and golfers in general could find community through the basic setup of a golf round: when you spend merely a fraction of the 4 hours on the course hitting the ball, the rest of the time fosters conversations with your fellow playing partners. On multiple occasions, I understood that the Latino community was one that sought community in everything they do, so golf's natural ability to provide that was very appealing to their demographic.
B) First Tee specifically acted as a gathering space. I went into this one much deeper in the previous blogs, but the point was that First Tee acts as a space where recent immigrants find others in the same situation. These parents often come to the course to meet one another, and sometimes end up doing administrative volunteering or even learning how to play golf from their kids, representing another way in which First Tee acts as more than a golf class.
C) Golf acts as a gateway to professionalism, and First Tee is a place that prioritizes life skills over golf itself. From their earliest classes, they teach students how to shake hands with strangers, make eye contact and hold a conversation, make small talk with their playing partners, and show courtesy. Those skills, along with the fact that many of these parents consider golf a 'corporate sport', believe that setting their kid up with golf will benefit them later down the road with their career and their mindset.
4) What can First Tee do better as an organization to further prolong this resurgence of Latino golfers?
The simple recommendation I plan on proposing is to lean into the professional benefits of the sport. Regardless of people's views on the sport and its discrimination, something that can clearly provide success later in life for their children is often enough to persuade these parents to consider the program. This would include prioritizing this aspect of their program during outreach events, and centering their curriculum around the soft skills that make good golfers successful businessmen.
This is my basic outline, and I'm building the paper as I write this blog. I'm excited to finish it, and I look forward to the presentation that's coming up, where I can explain all of my findings firsthand! Thank you so much, and I'll see you next week.
Week 10: Papers and Presentations
Hello, and welcome back to the blog! This week was all about wrapping up the project, finishing the paper, and creating my presentation for Saturday's symposium. I'll keep this pretty short and just give you the highlights of what is shaping up to be a really successful experiment.
The paper ended going in the order of the following:
A historical contextualization, which explained the discrimination of minority golfers from the inception of the sport in Scotland in 1754 to the racist caddie system of the 20th century, to the fact that only 8% of golfers were minorities in 1990.
The preconceived notions about the Tiger effect and the pandemic effects that I've thoroughly explained throughout this blog.
The unsung effect of youth development groups, which starts to build the premise of my research question. I explained how this third effect has an effect that may explain the boom even past the pandemic jump.
The research question: What are the reasons behind the prolonged resurgence of Latino participation in post-pandemic golf, and what role do youth development groups play in attracting these communities to the sport?
The methodology for the literary review on leading questions and comfort, as well as who I asked for interviews and what each brought to the insights.
The four findings: the gateway to professionalism, First Tee as a community gathering space, the overall meaning of community as it applies to golf, and the lowering of barriers post-pandemic.
A word on the demographic data, which saw an increase even past the pandemic years and is showing minimal signs of letting up.
Conclusion and optimization, including what my recommendations to the program would be, especially around labeling their program as a professional development program on top of the golf that they provide.
The presentation was more of the same content packed into a lecture format, and I decided to heavily lean into jokes and analogies to make the audience understand what I'm talking about on a general level. Excited and a little nervous for Saturday, but I think I've done good work on making the project as sound as possible! Thank you so much for reading, and I'll be back for a final reflection!
Post 11: A Final Reflection
Hello, and welcome to the final post on my blog! It’s been an interesting journey to say the least, but I’m pleased and content with the work that I was able to accomplish over the last 12 or so weeks. I’ve talked about a lot of different aspects of my projects over the weeks, and I don’t want to bore you with the same discoveries, so instead, I’m going to talk about my key takeaways from doing research in this style and about how I want to use it in the future.
Community outreach is hard. There’s no other way to phrase it, and it was definitely a shock and demoralizing in those first few weeks when I had to deal with its rejection after rejection. All interviewers need to realize that their questions are not as important as they think they are, and that understanding is necessary to actually make progress in getting interviewees. Being humble and grateful for your participants' time is the first step to success, and expecting anything of them beyond a favor is a mistake.
Once I got into the interviews, I think that I’ve become much more comfortable with talking with strangers, even in the interviewer-interviewee dynamic. This project has taught me a lot about the research that I want to conduct in college, and also has given me the confidence to talk with people about issues that I wouldn’t normally talk about in regular conversation. Working with so many people through both an English and Spanish medium helped me discover what type of researcher I want to be, and I think it’ll continue to gravitate towards this more qualitative side.
Ultimately, this project has given me confidence, composure under pressure, and skills that I need to be a successful researcher. Thank you all for following along, and I’m honored to end my senior year with such an amazing program!
-Diyaan