Naval Air Facility Atsugi’s Troop 22 Boy Scouts pose with thousands of golf balls they collected last Saturday. Morale, Welfare and Recreation paid 10 cents for each ball. After searching for three hours, the boys from Atsugi and the Latter Day Saints Troop 31 from Sagami Depot collected almost 16,000 balls. (Daniel Voellinger / Courtesy of U.S. Navy)
On a recent chilly morning, about a dozen motivated Boy Scouts scoured a hillside beyond the Naval Air Facility Atsugi golf course driving range and unearthed a gold mine: 15,848 golf balls, for which they earned 10 cents a pop.
The three-hour scavenger hunt last Saturday, conducted by 13 boys from Atsugi’s Troop 22 and the Latter Day Saints Troop 31 from nearby Sagami Depot Army post, earned the Scouts about $1,600 in Morale, Welfare and Recreation bucks and saved the golf course $6,700.
“We didn’t think it’d be such a big deal,” said Navy Lt. Russell Hale, chaplain for the base chapel and the unit commissioner for Atsugi’s two Scout groups, a Boy Scout troop and Cub Scout pack.
“We always have a need to pick up golf balls on the golf course,” said Paul Hahn, golf course manager. “It was a win-win-win. It saved the golf course over $6,000. Now I don’t have to go out and buy new golf balls.”
The boys, ranging in age from 11 to 16, pulled many of the balls from the dirt on a hill beyond the net, past the driving range, where balls disappear after being launched by powerful hitters.
Hahn said sailors often spend weeks at sea working out. They return to Atsugi with strong arms and powerful drives, propelling balls beyond the range and over the net into loose soil, which is shrouded by shrubs and debris. Balls could have been there for a long time, he said.
“You just stick your hands into the dirt and pull up six or seven balls at a time, even if you didn’t see any on the surface,” Hale said.
The retrieved golf balls piled up so quickly the golf course ran out of space to contain them. Staff started piling balls onto trays.
“We ran out of trays. We started filling buckets,” Hale said.
The boys eventually collected about 1,220 balls apiece.
“I was delightfully surprised,” Hahn said. “We have a beautiful inventory of balls for the summer.”
Plans for the project began last November at the Annual Scout Golf Tournament. Golf course personnel suggested collecting balls as a way to raise money for the Scouts. They anticipated collecting a few thousand at most.
The Scouts were offered 10 cents a ball, the industry standard. Hale didn’t tell the boys about the money at first. It was geared to be community-relations project. But it didn’t take money to motivate the Scouts, he said.
“Being told to go dig in dirt and roll around in the grass — they loved it,” Hale said.
The money was a boon. The Scouts can use it to buy starter golf club sets and pay for lessons to sharpen their game. Or, they could rent a bus to ferry them to the Scout summer camp planned this year at Misawa Air Base in northern Japan.
The project was such a success, and so many balls remain, Hale and Hahn hope to repeat the event next year.
“It’s a good deal for everybody,” Hahn said.
