Member Spotlight – Sandy Barletta
Sandy Barletta is an active golfer and volunteer in Southern Nevada. She belongs to the women’s groups in Boulder City, and is a golf member at DragonRidge and Anthem, and is the president of the Chimera Women’s Golf Club. She is also very active within the Women’s SNGA. –By Brian Hurlburt, Las Vegas Golf Insider.
“What an honor it is to be the president of the Chimera Women’s Golf Association,” Barletta says. “Our group is only five years old, but we have over 100 members. Women from all over the Las Vegas area come out to play with us every Thursday morning. Our annual Pearl Harbor Day Invitational raises thousands of dollars every year for a worthy veteran’s charity. You can’t find a more generous or helpful group of ladies anywhere.”
Besides assisting her member clubs, Barletta is the chair of the WSNGA web committee, which has been challenging due to Covid because events are going paperless and other protocols.
“The WSNGA is all about making women’s golf in Southern Nevada successful and fun,” Barletta says. “As the web chair, I’ve spent a lot of time helping out with the Golf Genius side of the WSNGA website, as well as helping individual member clubs better leverage Golf Genius. While most clubs are familiar with how Golf Genius can be used to score tournaments, many don’t realize how powerful the software is in terms of creating a club website. It’s been particularly important this year because of COVID to find ways to help clubs go paperless, and the online signup feature of a Golf Genius website has been especially helpful to several clubs that I’ve worked with.”
Barletta got into golf in her 40s. She played the game but stayed for the wine and camaraderie, but quickly grew to appreciate the grand ole game.
“My husband was and is an avid golfer, and he has always wanted me to play,” says Barletta. “When we were living in Boulder City in 2008, I was invited to play with the ladies group there, and I really enjoyed the social aspect. To be completely honest, it was the wine and good company after golf that enticed me to come back. But eventually I got hooked on the game itself, and here I am today. It would be hard for me to imagine my life at this point without golf.”
Barletta appreciates the mindfulness of golf and looks forward to anytime she has a chance to be out on the fairways.
“Golf is different from any sport I’ve ever participated in,” Barletta says. “With running or lifting weights, it’s all about going faster, pushing harder. Golf on the other hand is very Zen. It forces me to slow down and focus on technique, rather than power, and that has been my biggest challenge with the game. But it’s also what makes golf the most interesting sport I’ve ever played.
Barletta grew up all over the country but her family is originally from Louisiana. She grew up mainly in the northeast and also lived in London for a few years as a teenager. She was an athlete in high school and for a time in college
“I threw javelin and ran track in high school and was a fencer for one year in college,” Barletta says. “I graduated from Rutgers in 1983 with a double major in English Literature and Mathematics. I worked for IBM right out of school and then worked for various software startups as a software developer, mostly in the Bay area before moving out here in 2006.”
Seems appropriate that she is the WSNGA web chair, given her background.
