On an Aurora golf course, young caddies learn confidence, communication — and how to handle a paycheck 15%
By Kevin Simpson11%
7/19/2026, 9:24:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 33 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Halo Effect, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 15.7% saturation with 446 hits. Analysis detected 3,968 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,847 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 31.4% and a BS Rank of 15% (15,659 of 18,284 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.60% of the article peer group.
On a dewy Saturday morning, a wiry 13-year-old who’s not much bigger than the golf bag he’ll lug across the manicured landscape arrives early at Aurora’s CommonGround Golf Course to learn the art of caddying.
But Paxton Freund didn’t roll out of bed before sunrise just for love of the game.
He has teed up some very practical reasons that extend even beyond the fact that his dad was once a caddie and thought his son also might benefit from the experience as well.
“I get to meet new people,” Paxton says.
“And, like, I get paid.”
His swing at describing his motivation may be disarmingly simple, but it lands squarely in the middle of the fairway.
The Colorado Golf Association‘s current iteration of an investment in caddies that dates back to the 1960s does indeed offer the enticement of a well-paying summer job.
It’s also outdoors, good exercise and a chance to step away from a smartphone screen for a few hours.
But the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy — named for Colorado energy entrepreneurs and founders George Solich and his brother, Geoff “Duffy” Solich — also offers training in financial literacy and leadership for kids, starting in eighth grade, who qualify by financial need and academic excellence.
For those who want to go a step further, there’s an opportunity to compete for an Evans Scholarship, a prestigious award that includes full college tuition and housing.
(This year there are 1,260 Evans Scholars enrolled at 27 universities nationwide.)
The caddies-in-training gather here on the weekend to be matched with mentor-golfers — volunteers who play the back nine at CommonGround while helping the kids learn the ropes, shot by shot.
Each new situation demands a different skill set — whether it’s tracking an errant ball off the tee, making sure a golfer has the right club, raking a sand trap after a wedge shot or pulling the flagstick at the proper time.
The caddies relish their payday — $30 for weekday training on CommonGround’s par-3 course; $60 for a loop on the back nine of the main layout.
They stand to make $90 (with a meal included) once they’re ready to handle a full 18-hole round.
There’s no tipping in the program, though that changes for those who complete two seasons of training and move on to affiliated courses.
But the caddies’ connection with the golfers cultivates another valuable life skill: communication.
Walking nine or 18 holes can provide a master class in learning to shed their adolescent shyness and interact with adults navigating a round’s undulating emotional terrain.
“I feel like this is like one of the few times in my life when I actually had to put myself out there,” says 13-year-old Bethany Dawit as she readies for the morning’s loop.
“I pushed myself past the shyness.
There probably were a couple awkward moments, but I think for my first couple of loops I did the best I could.”
Bethany learned about the program from her brother, 15-year-old Noble Dawit, who already has one season of experience.
He worked 48 loops last summer and hopes to surpass 100 total this season as he heads into his junior year at Regis Jesuit High School.
Noble also values the nongolf aspects of the program.
A child of Ethiopian immigrants — a group well-represented among the participants — he aims, like others before him, to be the first generation of his family to attend college.
But the life skills accumulated on the course have added a new dimension to his education.
When he’s out with a foursome, teamwork comes into play as the caddies collaborate to make certain that details like pulling the flagstick and raking bunkers get taken care of, ensuring the group maintains a steady pace of play.
Caddying for a solo player teaches him efficiency.
“The biggest teacher is going out on the course with your golfers and experiencing the real 18, because my first three or four loops were painful,” Noble says.
“They were treacherous.
So I think even in life, experience is the best teacher.
The stuff you learn from caddying, those are work skills you’ll take with you for the rest of your life.”
A maze of rules and etiquette
Once the morning’s first instructional foursome has been paired with its caddies, Ed Mate, who heads the Colorado Golf Association, reminds the youngsters to be aware, anticipate and adapt — a mantra for the trainees wearing their signature green caps and white bibs.
He sends them off to start their round with a very specific directive: Watch your shadows.
They fall long against the early-morning light, and a good caddie avoids missteps that might distract a golfer about to hit a shot.
Details like that not only define the culture of the game, but create a steep learning curve for the uninitiated.
Some players never completely grasp the intricacies.
“The caddies have been actually better educated than most golfers,” Mate says, “because some golfers never learn etiquette.
They don’t learn how to rake a bunker, they don’t learn how to repair ball marks properly, they don’t learn how to behave on the putting green.”
Although the academy launched at CommonGround in 2012, last year marked the first summer of what Tim Wimsatt, managing director of the CGA’s youth caddie programs, calls a “hyper-structured” approach to training and follow-through.
In previous years, there had been some nominal caddie training before the kids slung a bag over their shoulders and headed out onto the course.
Now, first-year caddies go through an entire summer of instruction.
It starts in early spring with four indoor sessions at the Aurora Academy Charter School, literally across the street from CommonGround.
That’s followed by four outdoor sessions on the layout’s shorter par-3 course through May.
“The caddies have been actually better educated than most golfers, because some golfers never learn etiquette.”
— Ed Mate, Colorado Golf Association
The season kicks off in earnest on Memorial Day, when the rookie caddies arrive at the course by 6:30 a.m. and venture out onto the back nine paired with golfers specially selected for their interest in supporting the program and offering constructive feedback to the teens.
“Ultimately we realized that we have a responsibility to really coach these kids up,” Wimsatt says, “teach them the game, teach them how to caddie and be more intentional about that connection point to golfers who understand the mission of what we’re trying to do.”
Ryan Tebeau, 32, absolutely understands the mission.
He grew up caddying in the St.
Louis area and eventually became an Evans Scholar at the University of Missouri.
He moved to Colorado four years ago with his wife and connected with the program through the Evans Scholars network.
He’s been coming out to CommonGround ever since to act as a mentor.
On this round, he’s paired with Paxton Freund.
The slightly built caddie comfortably keeps up with the pace of play, anticipating his next task.
He scopes out the distance to the pin with a rangefinder and relays the yardage to Tebeau to inform his club selection.
Paxton readies a damp cloth after each shot to clean the club face before placing it back in the bag.
Tebeau, reflecting on both his experience as a former caddie and a player, passes on the firsthand knowledge that the best caddies tend to be both personable and curious.
“The caddies that do really well are asking a lot of questions — about the golfer personally or the game itself,” he says.
“They stand out as exceptional.”
Second-year caddies head out with what Wimsatt calls “regular community golfers” for 18 holes on the championship course at CommonGround.
Once they’ve completed two summers with the academy, they can be placed at affiliate clubs like Columbine Country Club, Lakewood Country Club and Denver Country Club.
There, they can continue to make money — with tips — meet prospective mentors and, if they’re interested, accrue credentials to qualify for consideration for an Evans Scholarship.
“Our second-year caddies, they’re getting to the place where they are asking questions about how to read greens,” Wimsatt says, referring to the art of determining a putt’s path to the hole.
“They are getting to the place where they are more quickly learning their golfer and what clubs they hit on certain shots and certain holes.
We make them really, really exceptional at the basics, and then that allows the kid to run with that as far as they want to run.”
Mate emphasizes that the program isn’t at all about providing a pipeline of caddies to fill demand.
(Although caddie programs appear to be on the rise, only an estimated 5% of recreational golfers use caddies, with most opting instead for riding carts, push carts or carrying their own bag; and only 9% of courses offer them.)
Rather, it uses caddying as a vehicle to provide opportunities for students who have completed eighth grade with at least a 3.0 grade-point average and whose family demonstrates financial need — a fluid metric that looks at adjusted gross income and a variety of other factors.
Caddies are expected to complete at least 36 loops by summer’s end, attend weekly leadership classes, and perform volunteer work.
As they approach the end of high school, if they’ve caddied three years and at least 100 rounds, they can apply for an Evans Scholarship.
The award, overseen by the Western Golf Association, allows Colorado recipients to attend the University of Colorado, although Mate — who caddied and was an Evans Scholar himself — notes that the college options may soon expand.
Training made the difference
But the road starts here at CommonGround, on a challenging and creative layout designed by renowned architect Tom Doak that’s widely considered among the most accessible and affordable — and environmentally innovative — public courses in the region.
This season, from more than 150 applicants, the academy welcomed 35 new caddies along with 25 returning caddies from last year.
It also has chapters at Meridian Golf Course in Englewood, Lincoln Park and Tiara Rado golf courses in Grand Junction and Fort Collins Country Club.
The Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado Springs has a similar caddie leadership program.
“You think you’re doing them a service, but the truth is it’s a joy for me.”
— Brett Abernathy, Mentor and retired urologist
From caddie shack to medical school
At 14, Helina Seyoum was short and skinny and had to push through the same physical challenges that confront many of the first-year caddies as they slip into shoulder straps and tote a 20- to 30-pound golf bag on a journey that meanders several miles across any given course.
Working in her favor was her conditioning as a swimmer that gave her the endurance and confidence to handle the load.
Along the way, she learned how to adapt to the personalities of the golfers she worked with and anticipate their needs — whether that was a clean 9-iron or just an attentive ear.
“If someone was having a hard time with their round, I felt like I had to be strategic in terms of, OK, how can I make this round better for the golfer?”
Seyoum says.
“Some people like to talk, some people don’t like to talk.
So I feel like being able to gauge that was also another skill I had to build.”
Now 25, Seyoum works behind the counter in the pro shop at CommonGround as a summer gig while she awaits the next round of her education: medical school.
Her two years with the Solich academy led her to Denver Country Club, where she finished her golf prerequisites with a third year of caddying and then applied for — and won — an Evans Scholarship.
She remembers opening the notification as “a surreal moment” that changed the course of her life.
Now, after earning her undergraduate degree as well as a masters in biomedical sciences at CU, she’s been accepted to medical school at Rocky Vista University in Parker.
“I’m still kind of introverted and shy today, but I think caddying kind of brought out my confidence as a teenager,” Seyoum says.
“It helped me to not only meet a lot of people and learn things about them, but I feel like I learned about myself, too, as I was growing up.
“It’s interesting when I think about it now,” she adds, “because I went from not knowing anything about golf and being so nervous to being able to read the greens and make suggestions for golfers.”
Last summer, nearly a decade after she started caddying, Seyoum threw herself into another challenge: She’s learning to play the game.
“I started taking lessons,” she laughs, “and now I really enjoy it, honestly.
Any chance I get, I try to practice on the driving range.”
You’re not likely to find Adair Portillo on the practice tee, dialing in his long irons.
At 15, he has never played golf — “not even mini golf,” he laughs.
But heading into his sophomore year at Aurora Central High School, his goal is to follow the same path as Seyoum to higher education through the Evans Scholarship, and also meet new people — “even important people” — and learn from them.
On this loop he’s caddying for Brett Abernathy, a retired urologist who lives nearby and found himself hanging out at CommonGround more and more after he stepped away from his practice a year and a half ago.
Soon he was asked to be a mentor and figured, why not?
He had the time and it just seemed like a good thing to do.
Walking up the 17th fairway toward his well-placed tee shot, he asks Adair what he feels he’s done well that day as a caddie.
And when the teenager hesitates, Abernathy proceeds to tick off several of his strong points from the round.
It’s a common theme among the mentors, who often get pulled into the program by the recommendations of their golfing buddies.
Kevin Young, who learned about the Solich program through Ryan Tebeau, had never golfed with a caddie before.
So the experience of talking through the game, distilling it to its core elements, is almost as illuminating for him as it is for the kid carrying his bag.
“It’s been amazing,” Young says.
“Honestly, the coolest part is teaching them the basics of the game, like what par is, raking bunkers, watching your shadow — just little things, teaching them golf etiquette.
They’re learning to communicate with us, even just making small talk.”
John Koeppe was a high school classmate of Ed Mate, and last year the CGA leader invited him to be a mentor.
“I was like, gosh, I don’t know.
I got fired as a caddy, so I’m not sure I’d be much of a caddy mentor,” Koeppe says.
“But I came, and I’ve just really fallen in love with the program.
I love these mornings with the caddies.”
These are the golfers Mate wants handing out advice during these nine-hole dress rehearsals.
The ones who get it.
He’s looking for golfers who truly want to spend part of their day helping kids learn both the basics and the subtle nuances of a complex game, while the caddies also hone soft skills like communication, teamwork and leadership.
“Even at Denver Country Club, the golfers taking caddies are doing it half because of the service they’re providing and half because they just want to provide an opportunity for a young person,” Mate says.
“Here, it’s entirely the latter.”
In an almost ceremonial ritual at the end of the round, the caddies present their golfer with a business card that includes a QR code connecting golfers to an online survey where they can provide feedback on their performance.
As the teens filter back to the caddie shelter, Steve O’Brien, the CommonGround manager of youth caddie programs, huddles with the golfers for a more immediate assessment.
The conversation revolves mostly around details: Did they handle the flagstick properly?
Did they keep up with the pace of play?
Did they observe etiquette?
One golfer noted that he was chatting while walking up the fairway and didn’t notice that, close by, another player in the foursome was about to hit his shot.
Bethany politely reminded him to be quiet — revealing both an awareness of etiquette and an ease in communication.
Areas of possible improvement: greater attention to finding and fixing pitch marks, the indentation a ball often makes when it lands on a green.
Tracking errant tee shots, learning how to use points of reference to gauge their possible location and working with the other caddies to retrieve balls that disappear into taller vegetation.
“All they need is more experience,” one golfer notes, “and then that stuff will become routine.”
O’Brien thanks the mentors for taking the kids one round closer to their objective.
“That’s all the stuff,” he says, “that’s going to make them a next-level caddie.”
Analysis
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