Crafts and Caddies: Aaron Munn celebrates 10th anniversary of Junior Strokes camp

WARNER ROBINS Ga. — Sports and the arts usually don’t mix.

Michaelangelo wasn’t a baseball player on the side while completing the Sistine Chapel, and Barry Bonds doesn’t have any pieces in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

That doesn’t mean someone can’t do both, but especially with high school schedules people are often forced to pick one or the other.

Houston County High School head golf coach and co-founder of the Junior Strokes camp Aaron Munn has attempted to break those barriers over the last 10 years.

Munn and PGA Golf Professional Jarred Reneau founded the camp in March of 2013 in an attempt to provide golf instruction along with exposure to visual arts for children of ages six to 12.

“10 years ago we were trying to figure out ways to boost youth involvement into the city golf course during the summer,” Munn said. “I knew that I had the idea of wanting to do some type of art camp for kids…so I was like, ‘well, why don’t we mix art and golf together? Kind of use art as the hook and get people in and then we can do golf instruction also.’”

“We tried it out back in 2013 and it’s just kind of stuck ever since,” Munn added. ” We get a lot of great community support. We have students now that had been in our first camps; now they’re in college, which is wild to think about. It’s really a way of growing the game and getting sound golf instruction locally…but then also share our affinity for those visual arts and teach them a little something about art in general and appreciation for the arts too.”

It’s not easy to keep a camp running for a year, much less 10. Munn credits the camp’s longevity to a wealth of community support.

“It’s really something…I feel like word of mouth is big,” he said. “Jarred and I are very involved in the community. So I feel like us being involved in local churches, the school system and things like that, I think it helps that people know who we are already.”

Munn isn’t just garnering support from the locals though — he’s drawn the attention of people all across the country with his unique program.

“It’s gotten to the point now where there’s people outside of Warner Robins that have looked to get involved with it and spread it out in the Atlanta metro area and other parts of the country, so we’re hoping to grow from here.” Munn said.

“After 10 years of doing it, we feel like we have a pretty good handle on it,” he added. “I’m hoping to take it to some local municipal golf courses that I grew up playing in as a kid. I grew up playing in New York City, I’d love to do some junior strokes events at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and Silver Lake in Staten Island.”

For a camp to accumulate this much attention, it must be doing something right, right? But what exactly do the campers do during their five days at Junior Strokes?

“We do a small art activity every day. Then three out of the five days, Tuesday through Thursday, they paint an 11 by 14 canvas from start to finish,” Munn said. “We take them through the whole process of planning out the composition and sketching it out first, to putting paint on the canvas. They get that whole artist’s experience.”

“I started this series years ago called ‘Tee Up What Drives You,’” he added. “The idea is to take something you really love to do and put it on a golf tee. It’s the idea that golfers have affinities for other things. Maybe I love to play golf but also bowl on the weekends, so I can put a bowling ball on a golf tee or something like that…Since we’ve been doing this we have kids that have gone through several camps. So they have a ‘Tee Up What Drives You’ painting that has followed them and grown with them. It’s cool to see what they choose to do from year to year.”

“That’s their painting that they do, then they go outside. They go outside with Jarred who’s our certified PGA pro, he’s in charge of all the instruction outside. We do a short game station, pitching chipping, putting, full swings and sometimes we’ll do some competitions. We rotate small groups out, they get a snack every day and it’s just a good time. They’re only in there for three hours but they get a lot packed in those three hours every day.”

It takes incredible dedication and love for the game to put on a program like this every year, but Munn found both of those things early in his life.

“My grandfather and my uncle got me going when I was about nine years old. When I would go visit them in the summertime down in Brunswick…my uncle would take me to the golf course. He showed me how to play and the etiquette of the game,” he said. “Art, I’ve been doing ever since I was a little kid. I’ve enjoyed it so much. 2011 is when my mural business really took off so I’ve been doing murals for 12 or 13 years now. I do canvas work and artwork for my apparel brand Trap Golf, so I’m constantly creating and designing.”

Though he certainly does love art and golf, Munn has a mission in mind when he’s doing these programs.

“At the end of the day it’s really just a way of getting kids to look at golf,” he said. “It’s an expensive sport. [I want] to make it more accessible to young people and to kids that wouldn’t necessarily look at the game to [say] ‘We can incorporate things that you really love and make it interesting for you. While we’re doing that let’s show you this great game of golf that not only can make you more broad kinesthetically, but it can also broaden your network of people.’ That’s what’s so great about golf, in my opinion, is that it really does bring so many types of people together.”

Munn’s Junior Strokes is running this week Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to noon.

HHJ News