By Judy Reed

What started out as four teens joyriding in golf carts turned into more than $50,000 worth of damage done to the local golf course where the Cedar Springs golf team plays its home matches.

According to investigation records from the Kent County Sheriff Department, four Cedar Springs teens entered the Cedar Chase Golf Course one evening in early October and decided they wanted to drive the golf carts. The teens said they started them with a screwdriver, and then played “bumper cars” with them, smashing into each other. When one would get damaged, they would just go get another one. According to Michael Card, manager at Cedar Chase, they damaged 22 carts in all, as well as tearing up the turf.

After causing the damage, they also took pop cans from a shed and cashed them in at Meijer for $60, got food, and then returned to the golf course parking lot to eat it.

The four teens—Zachary Zenker, 17, Taylor Homrich, 19, Gregory Endes, 18, and Michael Shellito, 17—all pled guilty to malicious destruction of property over $20,000 as part of a plea deal. They will be sentenced in the next few weeks.

According to Card, it took three weeks to repair the turf. “We will not know until spring if the seed germinated and sod took hold, so there may be more work to do. The carts are still being fixed. The time it is taking to fix the damages made us postpone or cancel other course projects, like a planned bunker renovation and tree pruning and removal,” he explained.