Stacia Aylor was hired in March 2017 as the Administrative Assistant for The First Tee of Greater Tyler and brought a tremendous amount of experience.  She graduated from Texas Tech University in 1997 with a degree in Human Development and Family Studies, summa cum laude, and started her career with the Office of the Attorney General in June of 1997 and continued working with the agency in some capacity through 2009. After leaving the Attorney General’s Office and staying home with her three boys for awhile, she served as Financial Secretary for her church from November 2013 to May 2015.  Stacia has been the Executive Director for The First Tee of Greater Tyler since January 2018.

Christian Sarran has been serving as Program Director with The First Tee of Greater Tyler since its inception in 2011. Christian previously worked as an adolescent counselor for Memphis Recovery Center in Memphis, TN and served as Junior High Director of Students at North Bible Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. He grew up in Longview and played collegiate golf at Letourneau University. Christian has a Master’s Degree in Professional Counseling and is now a licensed Professional Counselor in Texas. 

A National and International Program

The First Tee was started 20 years ago by World Golf Foundation a partnership of both amateur and professional golf association located in St Augustine Florida where the World Golf Hall of Fame is located. If you’re an avid golfer you have seen their ads on The Golf Channel and national networks, which televise the PGA and LPGA and Champions tour events through out the year. Since it was started, it has now grown to having over 150 chapters operating in all 50 states and a number of countries around the world. It was conceived as way to “sustain and grow the game of golf” but also to use the unique nature of the game of golf to teach young people life-enhancing character traits and “Nine Core Values – Honesty, Integrity, Sportsmanship, Respect, Confidence, Responsibility, Perseverance. Courtesy and Judgment” taught in what it calls its “Life Skills Experience” classes. The Life Skills Experience program consists of 5 levels of training requiring a minimum of 27 hours and up to 60 hours of work both on the golf course and in the classroom as well as completing a number of community service projects in order to each of the 5 levels – Player, Par, Birdie, Eagle and Ace.

The Tyler Area Local Chapter Connection

As a local chapter, we pay no fee to The First Tee home office. So 100% of the dollars raised go to support our local chapter. We do pay nominal amounts for website and other IT support which gives us access to the First Tee’s latest comprehensive and evidenced base curricula with detailed lesson plan manuals and participant “yardage books” to document progress and the training programs and manuals for our volunteer and professional coaching staff. We also have access to The First Tee Intranet, which contains a wealth of information on Operations and Staffing, Programing, Marketing and Community Relations, Fundraising and Corporate Organization and Governance.

The Tyler Area Local Chapter History

Since The First Tee of Greater Tyler chapter was chartered in the summer of 2011, the chapter has grown to where it now conducts over 30 after-school “Life Skills Experience” classes and summer camps serving over 500 area youth ages 6-17 each year at 6 area golf courses, introduces the program in over 25 area elementary PE classes serving over 12,000 students each year and conducts introductory community clinics reaching over additional 2,500 young people each year. The golf courses are made available without charge. We provide clubs, bags and balls to all who need them. While we do charge a registration fee for our on-course classes, this covers only a fraction of what it costs to actually provide the programming and we accept all interested children regardless of family income by discounting our fees to make our programs affordable to all. We believe that our programs help our participants not only in the game of golf, but also at school, at home and in the community.  By focusing on growing the youth of today, we believe we can make an impact on the future of our community and help our next generation of leaders create healthy physical, emotional, and social habits.