From a young age and all through his time at St. Francis de Sales High School, Jackson Welty has volunteered for the LPGA’s Dana Open presented by Marathon.
So he’s well familiar with how important those volunteers are to the tournament’s success.
Welty also knows how beneficial that volunteer experience can be, having just completed his degree in sports management at Miami University. Now a volunteer coordinator intern for the tournament, he’s putting his prior experience to good use as the search continues to find volunteers for the event slated for Aug. 29 to Sept. 4 at at Highland Meadows Golf Club.
This year’s tournament is presenting a new challenge for Welty and other organizers, because it’s scheduled for Labor Day weekend instead of its usual July slot.
That means many youth, teens, and educators will be back in school in the leadup to the tournament.
Welty said he and others are eying volunteers from a sector he knows well who historically haven’t been as involved with the tournament — college students.
“The later date is definitely a big adjustment for us this year, but for that college-age group, it helps that a lot more of them are going to be back on campus and in the area,” he said. “So it is a new volunteer pool that we haven't had before.
“It's still been a little difficult to recruit for that Thursday and Friday, just because a lot of the time a large sum of our volunteers do come from younger people looking to get involved in the area with some volunteer work — oftentimes high school students,” he added. “But we still have some of those younger volunteers signing up and luckily for us, the Sylvania schools have that Friday off, so we have been working with them directly, and they actually are helping us recruit a little bit as well, which has been great.”
Heather Warga, the tournament’s volunteer coordinator, acknowledged scheduling the tournament roughly two months later than normal created challenges for acquiring the necessary 900 to 1,000 volunteers.
But she said doing so also created more opportunities for those who are typically not available around the Fourth of July holiday.
Warga expects an influx of sign-ups once college students arrive.
“I think that this is probably a benefit to us,” she said. “We’ve reached out to those schools in close proximity like the University of Toledo, Bowling Green, Lourdes, and not just through their golf programs, but also a lot of their service organizations trying to get them involved in the tournament, because in the past, they haven't had the opportunity.
“And so now we’ll be able to include more of those students in areas such as hospitality and sports management, which is obviously great for them, because it would give them a little bit of an experience just to see how a big event like the LPGA tournament is run,” she added. “And with that pool, we're hoping that we will reap some of those benefits, as well.”
Nate Kuffner, a recent Bowling Green graduate who is also interning as a volunteer coordinator, said the tournament is a perfect opportunity for students who, like himself, are pursuing careers in sports management and need experience to list on their resumes.
He’s been contacting his connections to his former school’s Sports Management Alliance group members and professors.
“The thing about our college students that’s different from high school or elementary is they may not have classes a certain day a week, which could be very beneficial to have them out at a tournament volunteering,” he said. “We've gotten those announcements out, and we’re working to get the word out as much as possible so they know about this opportunity once they come back to school.”
Volunteers who want to be actively involved in the tournament play can help with recording scores or act as marshals who spot the ball to players and oversee player and spectator movement, but Warga said there are plenty of jobs that don’t require knowledge of the game. Those roles include greeters, food service workers, shuttle drivers and valet parking attendants, as well as jobs helping with security, registration and check-in, and helping with grounds maintenance.
The cost to volunteer is $65, which includes a hat, polo shirt, food during shifts, weekly parking and grounds pass, and a ticket to the volunteer party. Select committee volunteers pay $20 and receive a Dana Open T-shirt, hat, food during shift, weekly parking and grounds pass, and a ticket to the volunteer party.
First Published August 28, 2022, 12:00 p.m.
