Western Ontario Golf Superintendent's Association

WOGSA 2024

Welcome to the WOGSA for 2024. Sorry for the delay getting these annual notes sent out to our membership, it has been a busy off-season personally (who knew downsizing to 9 holes would be so difficult!) and of course the early spring like weather got everyone moving early only to have a wet, cool April slow things down again. Our schedule is set and I am personally very excited as we have a great lineup again this year. A couple of special events, a retirement day for our old friend Dan Lavis which is co-hosted by the Greater London and area Golf Superintendents Association and a new event to replace the annual Taylor Barnes event, the Billy Glashan Memorial tournament to honor our long time WOGSA VP who passed away this past winter.

The hard working Board of Directors of the WOGSA which consists of Trevor Hunter, Angelo Capannelli, Gavin Kellogg, James Raynor, Dan Sliasas, and Paul Powers didn’t even find time to get together for our annual state of the Association meeting, we had to do it by Zoom call this year, who knew everyone would be so busy in the winter! The WOGSA mandate is to keep our meetings relaxed, fun to attend, and most importantly affordable for all our members. This continues to be challenging in today’s times with the cost of almost everything rising and venues becoming very difficult to come by. We as a group are feeling a bit more of a pinch, but we are as determined as ever to try and give our members the best value for their money.

Areas we will continue to focus on moving forward include:

• The annual WOGSA membership fee will be waived for the year, we will price our meetings fairly to cover all costs, and put a few dollars towards the Association.
• The square deposit method for accepting credit card payments will be available at all events.
• At most events, we will award closest to the pins and several cash draw prizes or a skins game (a $5.00 draw prize or skins entry fee will be included in the cost of the day) Any donated prizes or leftover cash from the event will be awarded by draw prizes.
• We will continue to contribute scholarship awards to several key industry institutions.
• Our primary goal as always is to run affordable, relaxed and informative golf events for our Members and Guests to gather, network, and hopefully learn a bit in the process.

Let me take a moment to thank our generous event hosts in 2023 which included Ian McIsaac at Deerfield GC, Jerry Richard at Craigowan GC, Jeremy Julie at Sawmill GC, and Scott Dodson at the Park CC, your commitment and support of the WOGSA is greatly appreciated.

The WOGSA lineup for 2024:

• Wednesday June 19th – Port Colborne Country Club – host Jim Nicholls
• Thursday July 18th – Tarandowah Golfers Club – host Dan Lavis (Dans retirement event co-hosted with GLAGS)
• Monday August 12th – Lowville Golf Club – host Jim Dimitriw
• Monday October 21st – Usshers Creek Golf Club – host Tom Newton (Billy Glashan Memorial Tournament replacing the Taylor Barnes event)

Lastly our one important reminder, PLEASE CONFIRM YOUR REGISTRATION FOR AN EVENT, IF YOU NEED TO CANCEL, PLEASE CALL OR EMAILTO CONFIRM. In these busy times it is extremely important to our host clubs and to the Association to have accurate numbers for our events. Clubs charge the Association for the numbers given at registration so if you sign up and don’t show up, the Association is still on the hook for your fee for the day. It is getting increasingly harder to get onto courses so the easier we can make it for our hosts, the better. If you need to update your contact info please do so and return it to us so we have all your current information. As always if you know of someone who may be a potential member, please forward our info to them. We look forward to seeing you at a WOGSA event this year.

For the WOGSA,
John Taylor - President