Pennsylvania Junior Championships are Home at Hershey and Lebano

Junior championships are home at Hershey and Lebanon

By Henry O’Brien

If you want to watch both the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s (PAGA) Junior Boys’ and Junior Girls’ Amateur Championships, then you’re in luck since you won’t have to go very far between the two courses. In fact, you only drive 20 minutes between Hershey Country Club, the home of the Boys’ tournament every year since 2008, and Lebanon Country Club, the host of the Girls’ tournament every year since 2020.

Aside from the geographical convenience that makes the region a hub for the finest junior players in the state, both Hershey C.C. and Lebanon C.C. provide a unique challenge to the young golfers looking to etch their name in history.

Hershey has hosted the Junior Boys’ Amateur Championship 56 times, and this year will mark the 57th. The East Course is where the golfers will play and former golf pro of the club, Bob Kreider, knows the challenges younger players will face on the fairways and greens.

“The newer east course, where we play our junior tournament, is a little more challenging,” Kreider said. “Greens are primarily elevated, many (shots) fall off on the sides, extremely difficult. It's a par 71, but it's a really good test.”

Throughout the 2010s, Hershey hosted both the Junior Boys’ and Girls’ Amateur Championships. But with a growing girls' field, there proved to be a need for a course of their own.

Enter Lebanon C.C.

Jim Parsons, former president of Pennsylvania Golf, said Lebanon, with its proximity to Hershey, made it a perfect companion to host the Junior Girls’ Amateur Championship.

“Lebanon’s people couldn't have been nicer to us. So, we value those relationships,” Parsons said.

Current Lebanon Country Club head pro Andrew Surette said he wants to make the course worthy of the best junior girls’ players in the state. Possessing smaller greens with various undulations, Surette said he and his crew will be dialing up the green speeds and making sure the rough height is going to increase, making the experience “a little bit more challenging for these high-level girls.”

This increase in conditions will lead to the best shining at Lebanon. Parsons said, through all his years with PAGA and as a rules official at multiple levels, the moments he finds most exciting in the junior amateur championships were the trophy ceremonies.

For Surette, the honor of sharing moments like these makes the partnership between Lebanon and Pennsylvania Golf all the more worth it.

“It’s an honor for us to be a facility that hosts events. I think that the partnership that we've had in the last couple of years, where the boys are at Hershey and the girls are here, is great,” Surette said. “It’s nice to have one really nice central location to have these junior events, which are so important for developing the future of junior golf around here. And, also it's a great way for us to show off our golf course and what we're doing here.”