Introducing Year Two of Turning Stones Training Camps
-By Matt Thurmond
As the Fall Season of college golf winds down, our focus (Coach Armen and Coach Matt) turns to our goals with Turning Stones Trainings. We want to provide a variety of the best possible camp and training experiences for future college golfers. Our camps will always be planned and operated by us, the actual coaches, and we love connecting with young golfers directly and deeply. We will also build our camps to prepare each student for the recruiting process, and for being a successful college golfer in the future.
Last year we ran nine different camps of various types and sizes, with 137 different junior golfers participating. Many attended multiple camps. We are thankful to everyone who attended and who helped us improve the experience. We’ve enjoyed following everyone’s success this season and know many have won tournaments, made commitments to universities, and reached a variety of goals. We will take what we learned to make this year’s camps even better.
Our most-offered and attended camps are our “Day Camps,” which provide an affordable way to get on campus, use our awesome college golf facilities, interact directly with the coaches, hear valuable guidance on recruiting, get to know some current college golfers, and practice like a college player to get better at golf. This year UCLA will offer Day Camps, in addition to the ASU camps.
We also will have a Winter Camp, like last year, that will be a truly one-of-a-kind premium college golf preparation experience. Our Sun Devil Winter Camp this year is Jan 5-8 and is limited to 20 people. If necessary, we may consider adding another Winter Camp. We will also be having our first overnight camp (just like the Sun Devil Winter Camp) at UCLA on June 22-25.
A minimum of three D1 college coaches, along with other coaches and students, will coach and lead these camps, being present the entire time. Camp instruction goes from early morning to late at night and the training is long and intense. This Winter Camp/Summer Camp experience is essentially four days of the life of a college golfer (without the schoolwork!) and everyone who attends will love being on a team and having a deeply personal and connected experience with the coaches, student-athletes, and other golfers.
An idea for a one-day “Super Camp” is being discussed. This would be a full day of intense training, like a day of the Winter Camp, but just for a single day. More to come on this.
With Coach Armen now the Head Men’s Golf Coach at UCLA, we have Turning Stones Training Camps happening both in Tempe and in Los Angeles. Camps will be similar, but slightly different, based on the location. This also brings in two new coaches, Coach Thomas Sutton (ASU) and Patrick Murphy (UCLA) for everyone to learn from and get to know.
We love coaching. We love college golf. We love connecting with passionate future college golfers and their parents. Finding the right school, being prepared to thrive there, and using the college golf experience as a springboard to the rest of life is what we want to help everyone accomplish. Our training camps will focus on those things and we hope you will find great value in attending.
