Author: brittany

2025 Polar Bear Scramble

Join us for the first adult-child tournament of the year! This will be an age-based event where participants and the important adults in their life will compete for a chance to win!

Register Here!

6th Annual Brigade Golf ParTEE

We had so much fun this past Tuesday hanging out with our friends at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southeastern NC Brigade Campus! With help from Live Oak Bank volunteers, we practiced our full swing with Golfzilla, practiced hula-hoop putting, and so many more fun activities. We look forward to this event each year and it did not disappoint! Our shirts were sponsored by Sheally Insurance and we are incredibly grateful.

Teeing off Spring at the Loop!

CommUNITY Day 2024 was a fabulous success!

Our spring kickoff event was designed to showcase what First Tee – Greater Wilmington is all about and to foster connections within our service area. Located at The Loop, the event provided a vibrant setting for families to come together and enjoy a day of fun activities and community engagement! We were thrilled by the overwhelming response of 12 local vendors who joined us, bringing delicious cookies, fun activities, and even balloon animals! Don’t miss out on future events and opportunities to engage with the First Tee – Greater Wilmington community! Join our mailing list to stay informed about upcoming events, exclusive offers, and important deadlines!

2023 Year in Review

2023 is coming to a close! We have had such an awesomely successful year, and we want to share that with you. So, here is 2023 by the numbers!

634 Unique Participants – this is every student that has signed up for a class or a camp with us! Each student is only counted once, which is why they’re called “unique.”


47% Male, 53% Female Ratio – Pretty self explanatory, we’re close to half and half boys and girls in our program.


33% of Students from a Diverse Background – this percentage of our students identifies as non-Caucasian.


17 Community Events – these are events that we have attended, not thrown, around the community! Most often these are in conjunction with our community partners.


485 Hours on “The Loop” – “The Loop” is our 3-hole learning facility next to the Municipal Golf Course. 485 is the amount of hours we had classes, clinics, community events, and fundraising events at our facility!


41% Teen Enrollment – 41% of the youth in our program are between the ages of 12-17.


88 Unique, Active Volunteers – these are the people that make our programs possible! This number is any volunteer that has coached a class or worked an event with us.

We’re Building Game Changers – Together!

Thank you so much for your donation! We appreciate your contribution and are so excited that you’re joining us in Building Game Changers!

Check out our upcoming events!

Visit our events page to hear about what’s next, as well as view our past Tee Up for Success Galas!

Events

Get involved!

Our volunteers are the ultimate Game Changers. Everything we do would not be possible without donors like you and dedicated volunteers like them! If you’re interested in learning more about getting involved as a volunteer, click below or visit the “Get Involved” tab!

Increase your Impact!

Consider making your donation monthly to join our team of ambassadors. Every donation, no matter what size, helps us support kids in the Greater Wilmington area. Monthly donations help set us up to maintain our growth as we expand our reach! Visit the Donate page to learn how to make your donation recurring.

4th Annual Brigade Golf ParTee

View Photos

Monday, March 7, 2022 – On March 7th, First Tee Greater Wilmington hosted our 4th Annual Brigade Golf ParTee at Brigade Boys & Girls Club with the help of some wonderful volunteers from LiveOak Bank. Over 150 youth were in attendance, learning the basics of the golf swing and core values through a fun lineup of stations.  The kids were able to experience a putting driving range in the gym, chipping marshmallows at targets, hitting full swings out into the big field, and playing golf with other sports equipment to learn distance control, how to set up, balance, and following through with their swing.  And of course, no after-school event is complete without a little snack break station and pop-up photo booth.  It truly was a blast, despite the 20+mph winds! We look forward to being out at Brigade Boys and Girls Club more in the future to continue having fun and growing our outreach in the community. We’d like to thank the Brigade staff for helping us pull off this event as well as Sheally Insurance for providing all the participants with an awesome Golf ParTee t-shirt! A true example of a community coming together to help make a positive impact on our youth!

GolfZilla Makes an Appearance at Maides Park Fall Festival

On Friday, October 22nd, First Tee Greater Wilmington brought a special friend to visit the Maides Park Fall Festival, Golfzilla! Friends and family of Maides Park Community Center afterschool program spent the evening trick-or-treating, playing games, singing, & dancing. Community partners came together to create a fun and spooky evening. First Tee Greater Wilmington had a booth set up where participants could practice their full swing and try and hit golfzilla. We were impressed, to say the least!! Maides Park & First Tee have had a partnership since 2018. Each year, First Tee provides programming at Maides Park to their afterschool participants, free of charge. We look forward to a new season in 2022!  

Drive, Chip & Putt Local Qualifier – Lula Rivera Advances!

Each summer, local youth golfers in the Greater Wilmington test their skills at the local Drive, Chip & Putt Qualifier at Country Club of Landfall. It presents a stage for the participants to showcase their skills but also be able to manage their nerves and emotions. First Tee – Greater Wilmington had 10 participants entered into the DCP at Country Club of Landfall this year. One of those participants, Lula Rivera, advanced to the regional qualifier at UNC Finley on July 21st! Lula scored a total of 70 points, which was enough to place in 3rd and advance to the next round! Lula was competing in the Female 14-15 Age Group with 8 other golfers. What a huge accomplishment!! We give our biggest congrats to her and wish her the best of luck on July 21st at UNC Finley Golf Course. Other notable First Tee – Greater Wilmington Participants: Cooper Moss – Finished 2nd in the chip portion of her age division For more information about what the Drive, Chip & Putt competition is, click here.    

Baseball & Golf Go Hand in Hand – Wilmington Sharks Give Back

The Wilmington Sharks invited the First Tee – Greater Wilmington out for a night at the ballpark on Wednesday, July 14th. Our participants traded in their golf clubs for their baseball gloves and shark fins! Our night at the ballpark included free entry into the game and a complimentary meal for the participants. Prior to the game, we lined up on the field to high-five the starting line-up for the Sharks and our Birdie Level Participant, Lula Rivera, had the opportunity to yell “Play Ball” over the speaker to excite the crowd for game time! On Friday, July 16th, a few Shark players brought their golf knowledge to the Maides Park Community Center and helped First Tee coach their PLAYer level program to about 20 kids. It was obvious their golf games were pretty good! Thank you to the Wilmington Sharks for a fun evening! We are grateful for our partnership with you!

Communities in Schools Summer Program w/ First Tee

Communities in Schools of Cape Fear works in partnership with public schools to identify and connect students, many in jeopardy of dropping out, with the community resources they need to stay engaged in school. This summer, First Tee – Greater Wilmington was fortunate enough to establish a partnership that granted access for students in summer school at Freedom School to participate in the First Tee PLAYer Level program. During the week of July 12th, First Tee – Greater Wilmington spent 2 hours each afternoon on the football ball introducing the students to the game of golf but more importantly establishing relationships with them. The students had the opportunity to learn chipping, putting, full-swing with irons and driver, and even play a few modified holes of golf. The excitement level with the students was phenomenal and even the coaches had a tremendous time. “Each day we were able to connect with students and grow their interest in the game of golf. The engagement from them was impressive and they were determined to be successful, whether that meant getting the ball up in the air or simply hitting it past a noodle on the range. We are excited to continue and grow this partnership with Communities in Schools.” – Brittany Zachrich, Executive Director – First Tee – Greater Wilmington. For more information about Communities in Schools Cape Fear, click here.  

GLOW Academy Golf Clinic

We had a SPECTACULAR time at GLOW Academy hosting a First Tee Golf Clinic on Tuesday, April 27th, 2021. We danced, worked on our chip shots, & even played a captain’s choice tournament! GLOW student and First Tee participant, Rosa, taught us about golf etiquette and explained how to keep track of our score in golf. Thirteen GLOW students participated in this after-school golf clinic. 
We are looking forward to our “Glowing the Links” camp in mid-May that will include a special guest speaker, Anyka Williams – Founder of GirlSquad, and a visit to the Evolve Golf EC2 Foundry where the students will learn from their graphic artists how they take a golf course logo and print them on tees and custom, hand-stamped metals.
A huge thank you to the staff at GLOW Academy for helping us make this clinic a huge success. We look forward to our continued partnership.

Grace Holcomb Leaves Her Mark in Wilmington and at First Tee

We are so proud of our Eagle participant, and Laney H.S. senior, Grace Holcomb for winning the Mid Eastern Conference tournament with an amazing score of 65 at Magnolia Greens on Tuesday April 27th. This was Grace’s last conference tournament as a senior. We wish her the best of luck in the 4A East Regional next week and hopefully the State High School Championships as well!
It was also announced this week that Grace was awarded the LPGA/ Girls Golf Marilynn Smith Scholarship. She was one of five high school seniors in the country to receive the award! Congratulations on all your hard work, and perseverance you have shown to achieve your goals! A member of the Peggy Kirk Bell Golf Tour, Holcomb volunteers her time at her local First Tee and LPGA*USGA Girls Golf program. Outside of golf, Holcomb is a dancer, gymnast, All-State violinist, member of the National Honor Society, and fundraiser for St. Jude and The Girls Project through FWB Charity Events. Congratulations on all your hard work, and perseverance you have shown to achieve your goals!
Holcomb will play golf for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the fall while working toward a degree in Marketing, with a concentration in social media. Grace has a long list of accomplishments and accolades. The best character trait about Grace is she is humble. We are excited to see her growth in both this world and the game of golf as she heads to Greensboro this Fall. 
  Best of luck, Grace! We will be cheering you on from Wilmington!