Pepsi Little People’s Golf Championships Story

How did it happen that a city of 45,000 situated on the Mississippi River, with the only major airport 120 miles away, became host to the third largest junior golf tournament in the World?

“Three things,” says Pepsi Little People’s Founder and Executive Director Nan Ryan, “and not necessarily in this order”.
“1 – The hospitality of the city and the friendliness and support of many volunteers
“2 – The organization and pro-like structure of the tournament
“3 – High quality international competition for all ages
“And maybe 4 – I lived in Quincy in 1974 when all of this started”.

The idea for a junior golf tournament in the Midwest began with an offhand statement by a newspaper reporter to Nan when she was playing in the Quincy Women’s City Golf Championships.

“It’s too bad there isn’t a junior tournament in the Midwest like the International Pee Wee in Florida,” he said.

Nan’s answer – “I think I’ll start one.”

Actually, Quincy is an ideal location for a junior golf tournament. The people of Quincy love golf and golfers. Golf course architect D.A. Weibring, who played on the PGA Tour and is now a noted player on the Champions Tour, grew up in Quincy. So did renowned Golf Course Superintendent Oscar Miles. Both Weibring and Miles, along with Nan, are members of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame. And D.A. Points, who has played on both the Nationwide Tour and PGA Tour, has roots in Quincy.

One of the first things Nan did was to find sponsors – Pepsi Cola Quincy Bottling Company (now Refreshment Services Pepsi) and Bergman Meat Packing of Pittsfield. Both had products that kids love – Pepsi and hot dogs. Pepsi has continued as the major and name sponsor since 1974. Bergman bowed out in 1982. Allstate Insurance of Quincy has been a co-sponsor of the Picnic for the past three years.

Nan’s daughter, Kathleen, now an Associate Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology at Berkeley, named the tournament at age 4. “It’s for Little People’s isn’t it?”, she said, “so why not call it ‘Little People’s’”.

The tournament logo now features the silhouettes of Kathleen and Matt Weibring, D.A.’s son, who competed in the tournament several years and is now on the Nationwide Tour. Kathleen still holds the record of finishing in the top three places for nine consecutive years.

Starting in 1974, Spalding Golf contributed logoed golf balls for each contestant. That tradition has been carried on throughout the past 35 years with Top-Flite Golf, and now Callaway Golf.

Pepsi Little People’s started on the 9-hole Cedar Crest Country Club course in Quincy – a club where all the work was done by member volunteers.

“It was the ideal place to start,” remembers Nan, “because we wanted to give something back to the golfing community, particularly the high school golf teams.”

There were 174 players aged 3 through 15 that first year, 1974, coming from 13 states and Canada. Nan’s good friend Marilynn Smith, a Co-Founder of the Ladies PGA and then an LPGA Tour player, attended the tournament, giving a golf clinic and talking and playing with the contestants.

It became apparent in 1975 that another course needed to be added, so the 27 holes at Westview Golf Course were brought into play.

The tournament soon outgrew that 36 holes, and now, six golf course (99 holes) in Quincy and three neighboring cities, are used to accommodate the some 800 players aged 3 through 21. Pepsi Little People’s is the third largest junior golf tournament in the World, and the oldest continuous running event with a 3-5 year-old division. The age limit was increased to 17 in 1986, to 19 in 2007 and to 21 in 2008.

Good sportsmanship, rather than winning as the ultimate goal, is of utmost importance at Little People’s. Poor sportsmanship among players or their parents is not tolerated. In honor of sportsmanship, awards are given annually to the boy and girl displaying this trait during the tournament.

Family togetherness is one of the focuses of the tournament, so one of the highlights is the annual Family Celebration Picnic held on Monday night following the official practice rounds. Several PGA and LPGA professionals have been a part of this event, including D.A. Weibring, Dicky Pride, Jerry Haas, Marilynn Smith and Libby Pancake. The Picnic is attended by players, families, friends, sponsors and volunteers.

Another family affair is the Pepsi Parent-Child tournament, annually held on Father’s Day at River View Golf Club in Canton, MO, site of the boys’ 10-11 competition. Some 180 teams compete in this event each year, which is the official ‘kick off’ to Pepsi Little People’s Golf Week. Trophies to the top three places in eight divisions (four for boys and four for girls) are awarded at the Monday night Picnic. An Alumni-Child division has been added in recent years.

Completing the Week are the Pepsi International Team Events, played on the Thursday and Friday following competition. These have also become family affairs, as all players are allowed to have a caddie, usually a Mom, Dad or sibling. Competition is friendly and fierce, and the gallery sometimes has the appearance of a gallery at a professional tournament. Thursday’s competition is a Mixed Scramble event, while on Friday the players compete in the Mixed 3-2-1 tournament. Teams are in age divisions, and players are not allowed to enter as a team. This helps officials to be able to team international and local players together, adding a real ‘international flavor’ to the events.

And between the Parent-Child and Team events is the REAL Pepsi Little People’s Golf Championships, with official practice rounds on Monday, and competition at all courses on Tuesday and Wednesday. The tournament annually draws some 800 players from all over the World to complete on the six golf courses in the Quincy, Illinois, area.

There are nine age divisions for boys and nine for girls (3-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19, and 20-21). Age is determined by the player’s age on the final day of competition (June 24, 2009), and players are not allowed to play out of their age division.

The 3-5 boys and girls play 5 par-3 holes at the Knights of Columbus Par-3 in Quincy, with the 6-7 boys and girls playing all nine par-3 holes.

The 8-9 boys and girls play nine shortened holes, with the boys at Westview Golf Course in Quincy and the girls at Arrowhead Heights Golf Course in Camp Point, IL. The 10-11 groups play 18 holes from the forward tees, the boys at River View Golf Club in Canton, MO, and the girls at Westview.

All other divisions play 18 regulation holes, with the 12-13 boys and girls at Arrowhead Heights and the 14-15 boys and 14-15 and 16-17 girls at Westview. The 16-17 boys play at Spring Lake Country Club in Quincy, while the 18-19 and 20-21 boys and girls play at Deer Run Golf Club in Hamilton, IL.

Numerous PGA and LPGA Tour players made their golfing debuts in Pepsi Little People’s. Most noted are Zach Johnson, the 2007 Masters Champion and 2008 Valero Texas Open winner, who played in Little People’s in 1992 and 1993.

Ben Curtis, winner of the 2003 British Open and 2006 Booz Allen Classic, and this year’s representative, along with Brandt Snedeker in the Omega Mission Hills World Cup Matches in China, and Todd Hamilton, winner of the 2004 Honda Classic and 2004 British Open, also started their golfing careers in Quincy.

Other notables include D.A. Points, Chris Smith, Ty Tryon, Vicki Goetze-Ackerman and Canada’s leading player on the LPGA Tour, Alena Sharp.
Many more Little People’s alumni are now involved in golf in some way, including Jerry Haas, Emlyn Aubrey, Jerry Smith, Don Walworth, Dicky Price, Nicky Goetze, Kelly Robbins, who was named Co-Captain of the 2009 Solheim Cup Matches, Beth Bauer, Pearl Sinn, Michelle McGann, Laura Myerscough, Jenny Lidback, LaRee Sugg, Renee Heiken, Penny Hammel, Susie Pager Redmon, Kristal Parker-Gregory, Adele Moore, Allison Sellers, Patti Ehrhart, Meredith Ward and Val Brennan, just to mention a few. Several former contestants have won Compaq Scholastic Awards and been named Rolex winners by the AJGA. Many are Sagarin ranked players.

Pepsi Little People’s has been a part of the AJGA Tour’s ranked tournament program since 1987, and is now included in the AJGA Performance Based Entry system for boys and girls aged 16-17, as well as the AJGA Junior All-Star exempt status criteria for 12-13 and 14-15 boys and girls. It is a ranked tournament for the Junior Golf Scoreboard for boys and girls 10-17, and GolfWeek/Titleist Junior Rankings for boys 16-17 and girls 14-17. It is a qualifier for boys and girls 6 through 14 for the 2009 Callaway Golf Junior World.

Trophies and ribbons are awarded to the top finishers in all divisions, with all players in each of the youngest four divisions receiving a participant award. Prior to 2008, scholarships in the amount of $400 for the winner and $200 for the runnerup, were awarded in each division. Because of recent USGA and NCAA regulations, that program has been cancelled, and a Pepsi Little People’s Scholarship Program has been initiated to help bring players to Little People’s based on family financial need.

Each year, the Little People’s entry form asks for a letter from contestants stating their golf history, academic and athletic interests, and family involvement in sports. The letters that are written by the contestants are passed on to the sports editor at the Quincy Herald Whig, and from these the two Best Letters are determined. The awards are presented to the winners at the Picnic on Monday night.

A testimony to the popularity of Pepsi Little People’s, in addition to the number of players it draws each year, is the fact that at least half of the entries each year are returning players. Some return for one to three years or more, while others play as long as they can. In 1995, Mike Suhre of Edwardsville, IL, now a golf professional, became the first player to compete in 15 consecutive Little People’s. Mike plans to bring his young son to Little People’s in 2009 – continuing the family tradition. Mike was followed in 1997 by two Quincyans, Jason Traeder and Todd Rodemich, and in 2004 by Tyler Dickens of Quincy.

It is not unusual to have several players from the same family either. There are many ‘threesomes’ and ‘foursomes’, and for several years, Rick Castellucci arrived with his five daughters, all playing in the tournament.

Given that the players in the 14-15 division that first year are now in their 50s, it is not surprising that there are many players whose parents competed in Little People’s. Most notable of these families are the Akers sisters, Libby and Kelli, who both played in some of the early years. Now Libby and her husband Tony Pancake of Zionsville, IN, bring their four children, and Kelli and her husband Patrick Matthews of Allen, TX, bring their three girls. And Grandmother Akers comes along to help. Another is Garrett Cizek, whose two sons, Jordan and Peyton, now compete in Little People’s.

In keeping with its mission of helping young people, three other programs are also under the tournament’s “Kids Helping Kids” umbrella. They include the Tri-State Junior Golf Association, which conducts five or six one-day events in the Illinois-Iowa-Missouri area each summer for kids who need more experience in tournament play; the Little People’s Charitable Program, in which part of the proceeds from the tournament go to local and national charitable organizations involving young people, and the Little People’s Scholarship Program, which provides scholarships for boys and girls who otherwise would not be able to compete in an international junior golf championship. (See Scholarships)

The primary recipient of the charitable program is Transitions of Western Illinois, which provides special services for emotionally and physically challenged young people and families. Over the last 13 years, Little People’s has donated $64,000 to Transitions to help with their special needs programs. Another recipient has been The First Tee of Great River in Quincy. Since its inception, Pepsi Little People’s has donated more than $270,000 to charitable organizations and scholarships through its “Kids Helping Kids” program.

As with any event of this size, the volunteers are the ones who make the tournament possible. Some 300 men and women donate their time and support to the tournament, some of them working on projects throughout the year, while others focus on helping during Pepsi Little People’s Golf Week.

In 2001, a Volunteer-of-the-Year Award was established to honor the Little People’s volunteer(s) making the most contributions to the success of the tournament. The first award went to the Kroeger family, Vicki, Julie, Katrina and Brian, and the trophy was appropriately named the Kroeger Trophy. At that time, the four Kroegers had devoted a cumulative 56 years of volunteer work towards the tournament. One of more continues to volunteer each year, and Brian, now a college freshman, was the first Little People’s Junior Intern, and worked in various capacities during the 2008 tournament.

Little People’s has been the recipient of several awards and much publicity in past years. In 1995, Nan received the Budget Service Award at a banquet in New York. The award, made by Budget Rent-a-Car and the Ladies Professional Golf Association, is awarded to the person who has made outstanding contributions to junior golf.

In May of 1997, Nan received the Golf Digest Junior Development Award for an individual, and the tournament was honored by Golf Digest Magazine. Topsy Siderowf, GD Associate Editor, attended the 1997 event and presented the award at the Picnic.

“Throughout the past 35 years of Pepsi Little People’s, we have enjoyed more than 15,000 young people and more than twice as many parents and families,” says Ryan. “Each has become special to us, and we are thrilled to read about each of our alumni in the media today, doing whatever it is they love to do.

“Little People’s got off to a great start in 1974,” continues Nan. “A combination of enthusiastic people with good ideas, strong community support, and plain good luck, has made it successful throughout the years. It looks like Little People’s is here to stay. We’ve had a lot of good bounces.”