By Ron P. Coderre

On an ideal day for golf the Danielson Rotary Club hosted a full field of golfers for the 22nd Danielson Rotary Spyder Burke Memorial Golf Tournament at Connecticut National Golf Club on Friday, June 19.  

According to Co-Chairman Bob Chenail, the tourney is the Club’s biggest fund-raiser and supports scholarships to local high school students and dictionaries for all 3rd grade students in Killingly, Brooklyn and St. James schools.  This year’s scholarship recipients, who each received $1500, were Owen Guillot and Erik Rosati.

The winners on the course were Jeff Ives, Chris Brock, Steve Dion and Tyler Calabrese, sponsored by the Meade Insurance Agency.  They posted a score of 14 under par 57, edging the second-place finishers by a single stroke.  The second place foursome was James Martin, Gary Rawson, Mike Greene and Aaron Vargas with a score of 58.  They were sponsored by 85 Main of Putnam.  Rounding out the top three was the Re/MAX Bell Park Realty foursome of Mike, Jared, and Brendan Meehan and Brian Lynch with an 11 under par score of 60.

In the special contests, the closest-to-the-pin winners were Mike Meehan on the 4th hole, Dave Mulford (7th), Justin Elza (9th), Pat Smith (11th) and John Morrissey (15th).  Three teams split the $400 pool in the skins game.  The Chenail team of Bob, Tom, Rick and Steve picked up a skin with an eagle on the par 5, 1st hole.  The second skin went to the 85 Main foursome with and eagle on the par 5, 6th hole.  The final skin was awarded to the team representing NAPA Auto Parts of Geoff Watson, Spencer Abbot, Justin Elza and Karl Hosnander with an eagle on the par 4, 8th hole.  

In a tradition of the Danielson Rotary Club, a wild card winner was selected by picking a team from the remaining score cards.  The winning team was composed of Warren Scholl, Chris Nelson, Brent Camhi and David Raszka.

Donna Mercier, club president, thanked the golfers and sponsors for their annual support of the event.  She reminded everyone of the mission of Rotary, which is “Service Above Self” that is carried out thanks to events such as the golf tournament.

“Our committee put in many hours in preparing for this tournament.  The time and effort is well worth the hard work when we receive the type of support that we had today.  It’s very rewarding when we can distribute scholarships and see the smiles on the faces of the 3rd graders when we present the dictionaries,” said co-chairman Chenail.

According to the early returns, Chenail and his tournament committee expect to net approximately $20,000, making this one of the most successful tournaments in the long history of the event.

Jay Long served as co-chairman with Chenail for the 2015 tournament.  Other members of the committee included Rene Comtois, Nick Haines, Jeff Ives, Roger Mercier and Carmel Osterland.