Reneé Fluker: Teaching Life Skills Through Golf

Twenty-three years ago, Reneé Fluker’s son, Jason, came home frustrated because he was the only African American player on his high school golf team.  

Fluker tried to reassure her son, then a senior. “I told him if he stayed with it, he would be somebody special one day,” she recalls. But her son’s concerns resonated with Fluker, a single mother and social worker for the state of Michigan.

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Golf, after all, wasn’t just a sport like football or basketball — it was a networking tool that could help people get a leg up in the business world. How, she wondered, could she attract young people of color to the activity?

A few months later, in February 2001, she recruited 17 students to meet at Franklin Wright Settlements, a Detroit community center. From there they boarded a van and rode to the nearby Belle Isle Golf Center. “They didn’t have a clue what a golf course was — they just thought of golf as a white man’s sport,” she says.  

That was the start of the Midnight Golf Program. It has grown into a 30-week experience focused on mentoring, life skills and educational programing for 250 high school seniors each year. They learn how to golf, as well as life skills that will serve them well in the future, such as writing thank-you cards. Each student is assigned a college success coach to help them find the college or university that’s the best fit for them. Since 2001, it has served nearly 5,000 students, 70 percent of whom graduate from college. Last year, 2,500 rising seniors applied for 250 spots, Fluker notes.

During the school year, seniors meet twice weekly in two cohorts — a Monday-Wednesday group and a Tuesday-Thursday group — from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at The School at Marygrove in Detroit for an evening that includes dinner with volunteer mentors, life skills instruction and golf. “It’s a form of networking that also gives them structure and discipline,” Fluker says. Students are expected to be on time and abide by a dress code of collared shirts and khaki pants. (If they don’t have any, the Midnight Golf Program provides them at no cost.) 

College counseling is incredibly important, as most students have limited access to guidance counselors at their schools, Fluker says. The program also provides financial aid information sessions, college and career fairs, and an annual trip to allow students to tour college campuses across the country.

But the Midnight Golf Program’s support doesn’t stop after high school. The program also provides assistance, mentoring and career advice through college. “We run into situations where we have to work with a kid to help them get financial aid, buy stuff for their dorm, or even drive them to college,” Fluker says. “We keep an eye on them for the next four years.”