The Salado Chamber of Commerce has an annual golf tournament to raise money to fund their activities. I have entered it for many years and had tried to get more women involved to support their community. This was a difficult thing to do as women don’t look at it as a service to their community for supporting their fund raiser. Through the years I tried but it was a losing battle.

One year the Chamber Golf committee asked me to join their planning committee to give them suggestions as to how to get more women involved. I knew this would a losing effort but attending their planning session. I explained to them that trying to compete against the men was a losing thing and that there was never going to be enough women to have their own division. Women don’t want to spend up to $100.00 fee to enter one tournament. If they wanted women to be part of it they need to have one woman on each team.

To say that went over like a wet blanket they scoffed and said they would never be able to interest enough men to take part if they needed to add one woman. Well I told them then they could just have their tournament without women. That is the way it has been ever since except this year when Terry Dill our new advisor who is helping members to purchase our golf course. Terry came back from a school he was conducting in Maine to spark some interest in this year’s Chamber tournament.

The tournament was played and they had 65 entrants which is not a full event. I know there were some women playing as I saw some a husband and wife team out there. For the last couple of years I offered to help the Chamber by supporting a team of soldiers from Fort Hood to play in the tournament. I thought this was a good way to help them with their cause and also give a foursome of soldiers a day on the golf course and possibly win some prizes.

After the tournament Terry Dill gave a talk at the Chamber banquet to update those attending on the money raised to purchase the golf course. He gave information on what needed to be done to bring the golf course back to its original 27 holes. Since the Chamber consists of business people in the community Terry related how important it is to their businesses to have a successful golf course. This is a tourist community and to get people to want to come to Salado we need a beautiful golf course. In the winter we used to get people from up north who want to find warmer weather to play golf. They used to stay for a few days play golf plus shop and visit our restaurants. To get back to this point we need everyone pitching in to help work on upgrading the golf course.

As for my effort to donate a foursome of Fort Hood soldiers I found out that they said they could not get clearance for the soldiers to come to this event. I thought this very strange as we have soldiers playing golf here all the time. I chalk it up as my donation to the Chamber for their money raising tournament. This event really needs a makeover and updated with plans that will interest more participation. They have been doing the same thing every year maybe with Terry Dill here next year he can put some spirit into a failing event.