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On Monday, March 2, students from Oakwood-Windsor Elementary, with fellow youth golfers from First Tee of Aiken, had the opportunity to learn the basics of golf. They learned life lessons while participating in the 2nd annual "Golf With Us" event during the More Than Golf Invitational. This exciting experience was hosted by Bank of America at the Old Barnwell Golf Club. It was an afternoon filled with learning, laughter, and a lot of swinging!

Throughout the event, students rotated through interactive stations focused on different golf fundamentals while receiving hands on instruction from professional instructors and student athletes.

Students like first grader Taylor Stephens geared up to learn golf fundamentals for the first time. She was particularly excited for the "Over there where they hit station", referring to the Full Swing station. Taylor’s favorite thing learned that afternoon was "Foot soccer! You had to play soccer and golf at the same time."

Oakwood-Windsor Principal Davina Truitt was thrilled to bring her students to the new golf course, located about 10 minutes away from the school.

"Excitement doesn't even do it justice. We began a wonderful partnership with Old Barnwell Golf Club last fall where we started our first ever after school golf club," Truitt said. "Their partnership has been instrumental in helping to expose our babies to things that they may or not have been exposed to any other way."

Bank of America Aiken-Augusta President Ora Parish believes it was important to pair with Oakwood-Windsor Elementary School.

"Oakwood Windsor has a great population of students here in the community that we support, and a number of those kids are members of First Tee at Aiken as well," Parish said. "Having that collaboration between those organizations really brings it full circle."

Rob Ohno, President of the ANNIKA Foundation, felt the kids could take away more than learning the game of golf.

"It's not just about a game; it's something to learn from and failure is a way to learn. In a lot of ways, you're going to fail more than you succeed. It's just learning from every experience that you have and not having a fear of doing something wrong."