Girl power wins national accolade for Peebles golf club

The club has focused strongly in recent years on encouraging more girls to play the game and, on a post-lockdown return to training earlier this year, girls outnumbered boys at one of their junior training sessions for P5 to S1.

“This was a first for our club and probably, I would imagine, for any other club in Scotland,” said Ross Duncan, volunteer junior coach and marketing convener.

Peebles’ most recent junior competition saw sixth-year pupil Ellie Martin defeat a number of male players to clinch her first title of the season, reducing her handicap to 18 in the process.

Ross explained the club had tried to make golf as fun as possible for young players and not too competitive at an early age. It is open to anybody and it isn’t essential to have played golf before or necessary to possess golf clubs, he said.

“It was great to be shortlisted in the first place and we were really proud to win,” he added.

The vision for Scottish Women in Sport is a nation where females of all ages, abilities, ethnicities and walks of life are participating in sport or physical activity, within a positive, equitable culture, where their achievements are promoted and celebrated.

Helen Montgomery, men’s hockey team coach at Tweedbank’s Fjordhus Reivers, was shortlisted as volunteer of the year but lost out at the online ceremony to South Lanarkshire archer Moira Taylor.