Growing up in Omaha, Taylor Sidzyik often thinks back on his own sports priorities when teaching kids as young as 5 about the game of golf as the First Tee of Omaha program director.
“My dad was a wrestler and a baseball player, so I grew up playing select baseball,” said Sidzyik, who didn’t become interested in golf until his junior high years. “My cousins played golf, and I was like, ‘What are you guys doing?’ I caddied for my cousin in a summer (Nebraska Golf Association) tournament and got the hook bad.”
So bad it turned out okay for a guy who played baseball but considered basketball his first love during his adolescent days.
When Sidzyik, now 32, arrives at one of the seven Omaha courses linked to the First Tee of Omaha program during a busy summer, he knows the kids he instructs think the same way he did. “Golf is not their first sport,” said Sidzyik, who goes by “Sid-zick” for the pronunciation of his last name. Speaking from the Steve Hogan golf course, Omaha’s First Tee flagship in Miller park, he remarked, “It’s football. It’s basketball. It’s track.”
All Sidzyik wants, along with the 40 or so part-time coaches and teachers under him during the summer, is for the First Tee kids to feel comfortable with golf clubs.
“I don’t push it on them because, some of them, you can tell right away it’s not for them,” said Sidzyik, a graduate of Omaha Gross High School. “We try our best to read the kid individually instead of forcing everything on them. If they want to hit the driver that day and it’s fun, we’re going to do that.”
Between Sidzyik’s competitive nature and the passion developed for golf as a teen, he played his way onto the University of Nebraska Omaha team and ranks third on the Mavericks’ all-time list with 105 career rounds of golf.
While at UNO from 2011 to 2015, Sidzyik contemplated a teaching career, but immediately after his collegiate career was thrust into teaching and coaching at the same time as an assistant on the Mavericks men and women’s golf staff under then-coach Seth Porter.
“I got thrown into the coaching world at the Division I level pretty quickly and fell in love with it,” said Sidzyik, an assistant at UNO from 2017 to 2020.
Former UNO head men’s and women’s golf coach Seth Porter saw Sidzyik as a natural fit as a coach after his eligibility was up as a Mavericks player.
“I know what type of a person he is and thought he’d be great in that role,” said Porter, who left UNO last year and is now the director of instruction at the Indian Creek Golf Club in Elkhorn.
When the opportunity arose to become the First Tee program director, Porter encouraged Sidzyik to take the job. Porter had some insight since his father, Jeff Porter, is a former First Tee executive director.
“He’s working where he needs to be right now,” said Porter. “He has a passion for helping young kids, and he also has a passion for golf, so for him to be utilizing two of his biggest strengths is not only a huge asset for the First Tee but also the community.”
Around the time Sidzyik transitioned from UNO to his current full-time gig at First Tee Omaha, he married his high school sweetheart, Dana, then became the father of a daughter named Remy in 2022.
With the school year underway, and fewer morning lessons at the seven First Tee courses around town, Sidzyik goes back to school for more teaching and golf. “School” is considered one of the three pillars in the First Tee program. The other two are “Community” and “Summer.”
“My job during the day is trying to get into as many P.E. classes as I can to get our curriculum to the P.E. instructors,” said Sidzyik, who also doubles as the Gross High School golf coach during the school year.
The “Community” pillar means intertwined trips between local schools and community centers.
“Living out of my car most of the year, a typical day could be starting a first-grade class at 8 am, and I could be at a YMCA at 4 o’clock till 6 o’clock at night,” said Sidzyik. “Every day is different.”
Porter calls Sidzyik “a Swiss Army knife” because of his ability to carry out whatever he’s assigned.
For more information, visit firstteeomaha.org.
This article originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
