Scores hit links for youth program
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
About 180 people participated Monday in the Sheriff Helder's Cops & Friends Classic, a four-man scramble golf tournament at the Fayetteville Country Club, to raise money for the Arkansas Sheriffs' Youth Ranches.
The statewide program specializes in the care of abused, neglected or at-risk children. The tourney raised $ 23, 488 for the program's Crawford County ranch, which is the closest ranch to Washington County.
"This is a good cause for us, obviously, and for our community to support," said Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder, who serves on the group's board of directors.
Forty-two teams participated. Farmington Mayor Ernie Penn got a hole-in-one on the 12 th hole, winning a backhoe donated by A. Camp Equipment, a business owned by Andy Judkins in Fayetteville.
"We had a lot of stuff donated throughout the community," Helder said.
The event also included putting contests and raffles.
The golf tournament started last year as a fundraiser for Helder when he ran for sheriff, but he did not have an opponent. So this year's event is benefiting the ranches program.
"This will be an annual event," Helder said.
And every year, he said, organizers will decide what program to support with the proceeds.
There are five youth ranches in Arkansas.
The idea is to be within two hours of all the population centers of the state," said Thomas H. "Mike "Cumnock, CEO of Arkansas Sheriffs' Youth Ranches, and have enough land for youth to raise cows and chickens and ride horses.
The Crawford County campus serves the Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Springdale and Bentonville areas, but youth from Northwest Arkansas may go to another location if deemed appropriate, Cumnock said.
The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation provided the organization with a grant in 1999 to purchase 265 acres to set up the ranch in Crawford County. It has been open for two years. The program, however, has been around since 1976.
"About all of our kids are victims of abuse and neglect," Cumnock said of the children served through the ranches.
The population includes youth in Arkansas Department of Human Services custody who have had multiple foster home placements or failed adoptions.
"They really like the idea of going into a group home setting," Cumnock said, adding that they don't really deal well with "the intensity of a family."
He said the abused children often prefer the peer interaction at the ranches.
It is a long-term program, he said, with the average stay being about five years.
Youth may even stay through college, Cumnock said. Eighty-five percent of participants go to college, he said, and there is a 100 percent high school graduation rate.
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