First Tee Triad fundraiser returns to Gillespie Golf Course Friday

Gillespie Golf Course will again become a youth-development stage Friday when First Tee - Triad brings back its Race to Ace fundraiser at 306 E. Florida St. in Greensboro. The event is built around a family-friendly midday window from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., with a putting course, bounce houses, food trucks, a beer garden and live music before the golf challenge itself begins.

The fundraiser matters in Guilford County because Gillespie is not just another tournament site. First Tee describes it as Greensboro’s only municipal golf course and its home base, while the City of Greensboro calls it the city’s oldest municipal golf course. That mix of public access and deep history gives the course a different role in East Greensboro: it is both a recreation space and a place where young people can be introduced to golf, confidence-building and life skills.

Much of First Tee - Triad’s local work runs through Club Golf, a program that uses bus transportation from 12 elementary and middle schools to bring students to Gillespie for instruction and on-course play. Money raised through Race to Ace helps support that kind of programming, giving children and teens a chance to learn the game in a setting that is close to home and tied to their own community.

Gillespie’s history also carries weight far beyond sport. In 1955, six Black men, Dr. George Simkins Jr., Phillip Cook, Elijah Herring, Samual Murray, Joseph Sturdivant and Leon Wolfe, played the course in defiance of whites-only rules, helping push the city toward desegregation. The city dedicated a North Carolina Civil Rights Trail marker there on Aug. 23, 2023, and later selected artist Vincent Ballentine from more than 50 submissions nationwide for a mural honoring that legacy.

The fundraiser arrives as the city continues to invest in the course’s future. In 2024, Greensboro announced a $2 million investment in the Gillespie renovation project and said it was working with the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation on additional funding. City officials also were pursuing National Register of Historic Places nomination work for Gillespie on May 28 as part of a broader civil-rights preservation effort.

For families in Greensboro and Guilford County, Race to Ace ties those threads together: a public golf course with a civil-rights legacy, a city asset under active preservation and a nonprofit program using the game to widen opportunity for children who might otherwise never step onto the course.