March 4, 2025 | Program Update
Ruth Sword has been a Physical Educator with Charleston County School District for 17 years. She got her start at Malcolm C. Hursey Montessori School in North Charleston and has supported many elementary schools in the area, including Montessori Community in West Ashley, where she’s been teaching for 14 years.
Getting Started with Golf
Coach Ruth doesn’t consider herself a golfer or at least didn’t have any experience playing the sport until 2014. “My oldest son wanted to play, and we enrolled him in a First Tee program. It was a great experience, so I called Bucky about getting involved [in the In-School Program]. I remember him coming here and sitting down in my office. I didn’t know anything about golf… I remember him explaining the difference between birdie, bogey, and par in his excited Bucky way. He set up the whole lesson and stayed the whole day to help me teach it.”
Ruth Sword, Physical Educator & First Tee In-School Program Partner
Ruth has been teaching a golf unit every year since then. She also trains and chaperones a Montessori Community School team for Champions Cup, our annual Golf & Life Skills tournament for elementary students. Her team even won the tournament in 2016. Ruth keeps their Champions Cup plaque in her office and still recalls the students by name who played that year, most of whom are in college now.
Montessori Community School is all smiles after winning Champions Cup in 2016
Non-golfer to golf parent to golf coach and, more recently, a repeat RBC Heritage volunteer—it’s hard to imagine Ruth Sword ever being intimidated by a sport that now occupies so much of her time, but she suspects the overwhelming nature of golf is what keeps most kids (and PE teachers) from giving it a try. She appreciates that First Tee keeps things simple (In-School Program curriculum focuses on using two clubs), and she believes the confidence found in demystifying an unfamiliar game will serve her students well in life, even if they never set foot on a golf course.
First Tee lesson at Montessori Community School introduces fundamentals with two clubs.
And confidence is just one of the Core Values being taught in Ruth’s First Tee lesson plans… “We go over those [Core Values] all the time, even when we aren’t in our golf unit. When students are struggling, I’ll ask ‘how can we use good judgment’ or ‘how can we show perseverance?’ The kids know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Coach Ruth’s students solve a Core Value Challenge at Champions Cup.
A Pathway to Pathfinders
Coach Ruth only sees her students for about 3 hours per week, but that isn’t stopping her from making waves beyond the classroom. Last year, she helped a child tap into life-changing support, information, and opportunities (something we call social capital).
As a First Tee parent and In-School Program partner, Ruth receives (and thankfully for us, also faithfully reads) our monthly newsletters. She’s been following our Pathfinder Immersion Program (PIP), a needs-based golf and STEM enrichment initiative for middle and high school students, since its inception in 2021. When a call for PIP applicants went out, Sword was committed to finding an ideal candidate, but she needed some help… “I only get to work with my classes for 45 minutes at a time so I don’t always know what their home life is like. When I got the email about Pathfinders, I forwarded it to our upper elementary teachers.”
Pathfinders visit local businesses to learn more about career opportunities.
The teachers at Montessori Community develop a unique understanding of their students, both academically and socially. Most students enroll early, around the age of 5. Lower and upper elementary teachers maintain the same students for at least three consecutive years (lower elementary teachers maintain the same students for grades K-3 and upper elementary for grades 4-6). When a new student transferred in at the age of 10 last year, Ruth recalls everyone taking notice. “[This new student] came in quiet… We have a lot of affluent families at Montessori Community, and those kids are busy with summer and weekend activities. [This student] was making friends, but the upper elementary teachers noticed [they] were having trouble with basic conversations about vacations, sports, and interests outside of school.”
The upper elementary teachers suspected some financial challenges at home, but didn’t fully know the extent until they teamed up with Coach Ruth to help the student apply for PIP. “There were a lot of challenges… like transportation. We didn’t want to get [this student’s] hopes up if we couldn’t make it work, so I emailed Coach Johnson. He assured me First Tee could provide a solution… We all cried when [they were] accepted. We were so excited.”
After a packed 6-week summer schedule (Monday – Friday) and a school year’s worth of Saturday enrichment activities, including chess lessons, etiquette classes, a robotics competition, fieldtrips, and playdays at some of Charleston’s most esteemed golf courses, Coach Sword and her colleagues can hardly believe the transformation… “[This student] now has something special in [their] life… something to talk about and look forward to—opportunities they wouldn’t have if First Tee didn’t offer this kind of program.”
Pathfinders visit Charleston Area courses, like Cassique, to work with pros & mentors.
The positive changes witnessed at school are consistent with social emotional surveys administered to Pathfinder Immersion Program participants, in which 71% of students demonstrate achievement or growth in social skills and 79% demonstrate a high level of academic self-efficacy (a perceived mastery over their own learning and academic potential) after program enrollment.
And this is only the beginning… Ruth’s student will continue with year-round golf and STEM enrichment at no cost—meals, activities, equipment, and transportation included—through high school graduation with an extended family of First Tee coaches and mentors to cheer them on thanks to generous community support and teacher advocates like the team at Montessori Community School.
Want to help Ruth’s student and other Pathfinders build life-changing social capital? We will add eight rising 6th graders to the program this summer, and the application window for 2025 is open now through April 14. Make your impact by sharing our application, volunteering as a mentor, or making a financial gift.
