For five years, the community of just over 500 people has been pitching in to build a nine-hole course on land owned by the school district, entirely through free labor and donations of material, equipment and funds.
At first look, it’s a golf course where the terrain is uneven in spots and there are numerous slash piles, reports The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., and thick stands of trees are separated by narrow 20- yard alleys filled with calf-high weeds.
But a closer look, The Spokeman-Review reports, reveals a roughed-in tee box for the first hole, with a slight bend left to a green 130 yards away. There’s also a No. 4 hole, with a split fairway around a grove of trees, and No. 9, a 180-yard hole that finishes about 70 feet from a fence circling the football and track complex for Clark Fork, Idaho, Junior/Senior High, in the town of just over 500 that’s about two hours northeast of Spokane and an hour south of Canada, in the second northernmost county of the Idaho panhandle.
By taking a walking tour of the small parcel of land behind the school, The Spokesman-Review reports, you begin to see the vision of Phil Kemink, the school’s principal: A no-frills, nine-hole community golf course, built entirely with free labor and donated money.
Kemink and others, including former Clark Fork football coach Frank Hammersley, have been at the project for five years, to turn the unused property that the school district owns into a rustic course, The Spokesman-Review reports. “When it’s all free labor and donated money to help you do things, it takes a while,” Kemink said. “The biggest thing is if I could get a lawnmower. But it looks like a golf course. When we did a cleanup day it’s amazing how it looks. Go on Google Earth and you can see the fairways.”
The project started, The Spokesman-Review reports, when Kemink and Hammersley went out on a fall weekend with a measuring wheel Kemink had used for a landscaping job that helped pay for his college tuition. The pair tromped through wet brush, ducked under tree limbs and sidestepped 8-foot-high thistle before determining it was possible to squeeze nine holes, probably all par 3s between 130 and 220 yards, onto the acreage.
Kemink then reached out to the community and surrounding areas for help, and they’ve responded by volunteering time, equipment and money, The Spokesman-Review reports. Two contractors, one the parent of a student and the other the husband of a woman who had been a substitute teacher, helped with tree/stump removal and the shaping of holes. Mountain West Bank helped with a community service day last spring. Volunteers relocated topsoil to the greens and tee boxes. Residents trimmed brush.
Brian Cantrell, who takes tickets at Clark Fork football games, knocked down weeds on four holes last summer with a string trimmer, The Spokesman-Review reports. A teacher with a connection helped bring a donation of four huge containers of Kentucky bluegrass seed that sits in a storage shed, waiting to be planted. Boy Scouts are coming in to assist with the project.
“It’s a pretty monumental task putting this in,” Kemink said. “If I didn’t have the support of the community, I wouldn’t have gone forward with it.”
No school district dollars have been used on the course, Kemink stressed, and some residents have donated money that could be used to purchase a dependable riding mower.
Kemink has also contacted area courses, trying to obtain donated cups, flags and other golf-related items in hopes of opening up one or two holes in the near future. The closest courses to Clark Fork, The Spokesman-Review reports, are The Idaho Club and Sandpoint Elks GC, both 20 to 25 miles away in Sandpoint, Idaho, and River’s Bend in Thompson Falls, Mont., an hour’s drive.
Clark Fork’s golf teams currently practice chipping and shorter shots on the football field, and hit into nets inside the cafeteria, The Spokesman-Review reports. But this isn’t a “Field of Dreams” quest for Kemink, it was noted. He has no illusions of lush green fairways, spotless greens and a fancy pro shop. The goal is a course where youngsters can learn the game and residents can spend a few enjoyable hours.
“It’s not going to be a money-maker by any means,” he said. “It’s not going to be a manicured course by any means. It’s going to be rough, but it’s going to be fun.”
The same kind of fun, Kemink added, that he enjoyed when he played at Priest Lake GC in Priest River, Idaho as a kid, when he picked up range balls in exchange for a round of golf.
“It would die off in the summer and they’d drag metal pipes and sprinklers around,” he said. “Where it was green it was green, but there was a lot of dead grass and it was still a lot of fun.”
And during Clark Lake’s cleanup day, he noted, “There were several balls out there, so I know people have already tried it,” he said. “[The new course is] something to give to the community so they can come and basically throw two bucks into a lockbox and go have fun.”
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