Reggie Bush, a legend for Helix High School in La Mesa, made his way to the front and began speaking to more than100 San Diego kids about the value of playing sports. Except he wasn\u2019t talking about football \u2014 Bush was at Mission Bay Golf Course on Friday, June 5 to teach kids how to play golf.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGolf is a game of life. There\u2019s so many things in it that can help your life,\u201d said Bush, who would go on from Helix to win the 2005 Heisman Trophy for the University of Southern California \u2014 a victory that was reinstated to him in 2024 after it had been stripped from him over the discovery of improper benefits \u2014 and later a pro football career that included a Super Bowl win with the New Orleans Saints in 2010.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The clinic was a part of Bank of America\u2019s Golf With Us program, which the bank reintroduced this past April. Since then, the bank has also established a partnership with Youth On Course, an organization that provides youth ages 6 to 18 with $5 tee times in an effort to make golf more accessible for young people. To date 25,000 kids, including 2,200 in San Diego, have enrolled in a free one-year Youth On Course membership.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bank of America partnered with Bush to put on the clinic in Mission Bay and promote the Golf With Us program to introduce local youth to golf. <\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully they can hit the middle of the face on a golf ball,\u201d Bush said. \u201cThat\u2019s always the goal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anthony DiBlasi, president of Bank of America San Diego, said the bank has been involved in sports for generations, from financing stadiums to banking sports teams, but events like this one are more about the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, it\u2019s about reaching out to kids in the community, giving them a pathway to leadership skills and other ways of success that they wouldn\u2019t normally have,\u201d DiBlasi said.\u00a0
For DiBlasi the bank\u2019s partnership with Bush is important for the kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope that by exposing them to someone like Reggie, they could see someone that\u2019s had a path of success through sports,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite going to family barbecues in Mission Bay \u2013 and thus passing by the golf course \u2013 as a child, Bush said, he didn\u2019t get into golf until he turned 30, just before retiring from the NFL. Since then, he\u2019s taken to the game enough that he has also launched the United Athletes Tour, a crossover golf league designed for current and former pro athletes. The tour\u2019s first event is scheduled to be held at Torrey Pines Golf Course from June 25 to 27.<\/p>\n
Bush said participating in the clinic is a way to give back what golf has given him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully within us teaching them how to swing the golf clubs, we can also teach them how those things that they\u2019re learning help them in life as well,\u201d Bush said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said he wanted to teach the kids how tough the sport is, but starting with simple activities like chipping can help them develop the discipline needed to excel in the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think golf can shape a lot of their character,\u201d Bush said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enrollment for the Golf With Us program is open until June 15 and can be found here.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reggie Bush, a legend for Helix High School in La Mesa, made his way to the front and…","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_volume":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[165,166,66,1886,3306],"class_list":["post-4282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-golf","tag-golf","tag-mission-bay-golf-course","tag-reggie-bush","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@fogolf\/117328891535578342","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}