Golf Ontario’s EDI Journey Continues with Visit from Special Olympics Ontario
Golf Ontario
With the sixth annual Ontario Adaptive Championship is right around the corner, Golf Ontario welcomed members of Special Olympics Ontario to share their life experiences and lead a professional development session around adaptive golf.
Nine Special Olympics Ontario athletes visited Wyndance Golf Club in Uxbridge to present what Special Olympics Ontario does, how they support athletes with intellectual disabilities and showed our staff how to support athletes with intellectual disabilities to create a welcoming and inclusive sporting environment.
“This was a great opportunity for our team on our learning journey in an adaptive golf space and having Special (Olympics Ontario) here today was to help us learn and understand what the experience is for them on the golf course,” said Golf Ontario CEO Kyle McFarlane.
The day started with an opening presentation from Special Olympics Ontario’s Director of Sports, Johnny Byrne. He took Golf Ontario staff through Special Olympics Ontario’s competition structures and how Special Olympics Ontario uses sport to create opportunities for athletes with intellectual disabilities.
He also alluded to Special Olympics Ontario’s mission of building the lives Ontarians with intellectual disabilities through sport, vision of creating disability-inclusive environments across the province and values of empowerment, excellence, respect, diversity and inclusion.
“I think what we got out of today was seeing just the great connection and how both Golf Ontario and special Olympics Ontario have the same bigger picture goals,” Byrne said.
We were then introduced to the eight Special Olympics Ontario athletes in attendance, which included 2015 World Games Gold Medalist, Tess Trojan, accompanied by her caddie and father, Mike Trojan.
“Special Olympics has really changed my life,” she said. “I’ve learned that we’re all friends first and not just competing against one another.”
Along with Trojan, the remaining seven athletes of Special Olympics Ontario, along with their caddies and coaches, were:
Natasha Stasiuk; Mike DiRaddo; Luke Cooney; Catherine Partlow; Ryan Colpitts; JJ Scorcia; Krystian Pushka.
Later in the day, Golf Ontario staff got the chance to play an eight-hole round of golf accompanied by a different athlete on each hole. The day brought about many smiles, conversations and capped off a wonderful day of learning for all.
“Exciting for our team to get out there, have connections, build those relationships, but more importantly, to have conversations and use this as an opportunity to learn and understand what it means to be a Special Olympian and a Special Olympics golfer,” McFarlane said.
Getting outside, playing golf and making connections was beneficiary for both Golf Ontario and Special Olympics Ontario.
“The universal language that we always fall back to when we’re trying to explain Special Olympics to people is just get out and play, and that’s what today was about,” said Byrne.
Natasha Stasiuk: A Champion of Both Golf and Autism
Golf Ontario
Natasha Stasiuk lives a very active life: she attends Toronto’s Humber College and studies in their Developmental Services Worker program; she works at her local Golf Town in Mississauga, Ont.; she walks dogs; and she’s an accomplished competitive golfer as a member at Heron Point Golf Links.
However, it is how she does it all with autism, and an auditory processing condition that defines who she is.
“It’s like a superpower as I call it,” she said, “and it’s what people with autism call it too.”
Stasiuk, 25, was born in Russia where she was left as an orphan in a run-down hospital. Sick and often unattended, she was slow to develop learning and language skills.
Peter and Sandra Stasiuk adopted Natasha at 13 months and brought her home to Canada, where she displayed above-average hand-eye coordination as a toddler.
Stasiuk has played golf ever since PGA of Canada member Nick Starchuk was brought into her gym class in fifth grade to introduce children to the game.
“Nick came and he saw a lot of potential in me and suggested I started golf, and that’s how my passion for it came about,” she said.
Starchuk invited Stasiuk to an introductory lesson at the former home of the RBC Canadian Open, Glen Abbey Golf Club. Stasiuk was handed a putter and took to the course’s practice green, where Starchuk instructed her to putt a ball towards a hole that was 30 feet away from her; a putt in which she drained on her first try.
For many years after, Stasiuk was part of a large junior girl’s golf group led by PGA of Canada member, Carrie Vaughan.
Carrie helped Natasha with all aspects of her game, introduced her to competition and provided constant encouragement whenever she felt “out of place” or discouraged because she learned differently and didn’t always understand what was being taught.
Besides golf, Stasiuk played up to seven other sports when she was younger. Though swimming, soccer, gymnastics, softball and ballet were in the mix, hockey and golf were her two favorites.
“My sister played, I played, my dad played, some of his brothers played,” she said. “So, we were always a big hockey family.”
However, Stasiuk’s auditory processing condition prevented her from thinking and processing what she saw or heard when she was younger, and still affects her to this day.
“When people start talking to her and they’re talking normal, she can’t process everything that they tell her,” said her father, Peter. “They’ll be on their third sentence when she’s just processed the first sentence they’ve said to her, and by the time she goes back to the conversation, she’s completely lost.”
Peter has always been there to help her in speaking and believes his daughter’s disability has always impacted her because it is an “invisible” one.
“From a lot of people, you can tell what their disability is because it’s a physical disability,” he said. “Looking at her (Natasha), you wouldn’t think she has a disability, but she does.”
Stasiuk originally didn’t know she had autism until a psychologist advised her to test for it almost three years ago. Her auditory processing condition has been with her almost her entire life, which affected her ability to process what people were saying to her or keep count of her own score when she was younger.
“In the beginning, when she joined the junior circuits, the other girls caught on to that (disability), Peter said. “They would always tell her she scored more than what she got, and they scored less than what she thought they scored.”
Peter believed this was always a “disadvantage” for her simply because she took what other golfers said for granted because she couldn’t remember what she actually scored. He always followed Stasiuk around and kept score as a spectator; the scores were sometimes “completely different” from the scores that were reported.
However, thanks to the help of her father and family in adapting to living with her disabilities, Stasiuk has been better at keeping her scores as well as processing what people are saying.
Now, Stasiuk has made herself known as a role model to golfers with disabilities both on and off the course. Off it, she always advises anyone with any disability who is unsure of playing golf full-time to “go for it.”
“You never know what will happen,” she said. “Go watch these people with disabilities play golf, it’s amazing and pretty inspiring too.”
Stasiuk believes anyone with a disability who is new to the sport can quickly make connections and lifetime friends. Just like she did.
“I think she enjoys expanding the game to others that may not look at golf as a possibility because they have a disability,” said Peter. “It’s still a small segment that actually plays with disabilities, but it’s growing.”
On the course, Stasiuk has built quite the résumé in the past few years. She is currently world ranked No. 1-female golfer with intellectual disabilities as per the WR4GD Rankings.
Since 2019, she has been Golf Ontario’s Women’s Adaptive Champion, and plans on competing in this year’s Adaptive Championship at Weston Golf and Country Club in July. She has also been Golf Canada’s Women’s All Abilities Champion for the last three years.
Stasiuk has also finished top five in the USGA Adaptive Open in the past two years and finished first in the intellectual category of that same championship last year. She also finished third in the Special Olympics World Games in Berlin in 2023 and first in the Special Olympics North America competition later that fall.
Although the year has just begun, Stasiuk was one of 12 in the world chosen to train at the first EDGA Development Camp in Portugal, and she recently finished third overall and first for her disability category at the USDGA Championship at the PGA Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Traveling to different places away from her home to compete in each of these championships, as well as making friends along the way, have led to Stasiuk having more confidence in her game than ever before. She feels like she finally belongs.
“It’s good to experience different places in the world,” she said. “I know some of them are back in Ontario, but it’s still nice to play courses I’ve never played before.”
As April marked the observance of Celebrate Diversity Month, it presented Golf Ontario with a wonderful opportunity to share inspiring stories and honour the diverse backgrounds and contributions of our members, volunteers, players, and colleagues. We plan on sharing these inspiring stories–like Natasha’s–throughout the season.
As April marks the observance of Celebrate Diversity Month, it presents Golf Ontario with a wonderful opportunity to share inspiring stories and honour the diverse backgrounds and contributions of our members, volunteers, players, and colleagues.
Throughout the month, we aim to highlight stories showcasing diversity, focusing on our four Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) buckets of: Women, Youth, Indigenous, and Adaptive.
If any members of our community wish to share their own stories of diversity during the month of April, or to share personal experiences in and around the game of golf where diversity has played a positive role in that experience, feel free to tag us on social media @thegolfontario and use the hash tag #GolfForAll in the post.
Celebrate Diversity Month was first initiated in 2004 recognizing and honouring the diversity surrounding us all.
In alignment with Golf Ontario’s Strategic Plan, we are committed to intentionally developing and implementing initiatives to bring awareness and programming of EDI to our sport. The commitment to our EDI strategy is at the forefront of our ability to achieve our vision. We embrace the important role we play as one of the largest Amateur Golf Associations in the world in inspiring our sport and achieving our vision of Golf For All.