The 2024 season at the Seven Hills Golf & Country Club was above par.

President Scott Mitchell and Treasurer Dale Dorward attended the Dec. 17 Regional District of Mount Waddington Board of Directors meeting to present an overview of 2024, plans for 2025, and to ask for their annual $40,000 grant in aid.

Seven Hills had a good season with respect to participation. 

“We keep waiting for the shoe to drop. The uptick that golf in general, and locally, happened over the pandemic seems to have stuck. We’re happy to report in 2023 we were at 144 members, with 45 junior memberships, and last year, we saw a slight increase up to 151, with a similar amount of juniors,” said Mitchell.

“We had great plans to do some junior programming to further support that growing part of our membership but unfortunately we didn’t get that accomplished last year, but it’s a big priority for the upcoming season.”

This includes getting the juniors started right learning course etiquette as well as basic skills that will “hopefully set them up for a long enjoyable lifetime of golf,” Mitchell said.

Another silver lining of the pandemic was that many North Island hockey players took up the sport and golf programs were introduced that continued at North Island Secondary School with a team of young men participating in the provincials where they finished fourth. This “was quite an accomplishment considering the majority of them have only been playing the game for a few years,” said Mitchell, who hopes these school programs will continue in the future.  

“We’ll continue to do what we can at the club to make that a reality.”

Hosting events at the clubhouse is also a source of revenue. Last year, both high schools held their grad dinners at the club a

The annual Loggers Tournament had over 175 participants. A Filomi Days golf tournament was held, along with a few other private ones, and there was a wedding along with several meetings. 

“It’s a good venue for those regional gatherings. It was the first year for Peggy in our kitchen and she’s coming back. We really appreciate her and (she and) Tim have been super enthusiastic about the opportunity and they’re just pleasant to deal with and they’re trying a bunch of new things.” 

Seven Hills received lots of compliments from golfers about course conditions this past year “We were able to hire a summer student who was returning and able to do some more advanced work beyond just weed eating duties,” he said. “We’ve maintained the services of our part time mechanic who kept our fleet operating and we had some more favourable grass-growing conditions. It wasn’t quite as challenging as the previous two years,” Michell continued. “We had a big year of carpentry projects out at the club, the biggest of which was the addition of a new 14-cart shed which was sponsored graciously by James Walkus. In conjunction with that project, we saw the opportunity to affordably replace the roof on our driving range. The workers that built the shed for James put the roof on for us at a good price with some affordable materials.”

nd Port Hardy Secondary School has already booked for this year.