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Article written by Melody McKnight and appears in the VYCC U32-Montpelier High School Crew Blog
So much has happened in such a short time! After finishing at Osprey Hill Farm earlier in the month, our crew was asked by the U-32 Athletics department to help in the creation of a bona-fide disc golf course for the school. Previously all disc-golf on school grounds had been played using two strips of flagging tape wrapped around trees to indicate hole locations. While somewhat functional, this left a lot to be desired by anyone who had played on a real course.
Our first task was to tour the proposed course with Steve and Jeff and determine if any of the holes should/could be shifted. During this process we also flagged out approximately how wide each “green” around the hole would need to be to create a safe space for players.
We spent time shifting a few of the holes to be more visible or easily accessible from the trail to make the course as user friendly as possible. Once we finished our tour of the locations, we started in on the course.
We averaged about 1.5 holes/tees each day for the whole project. This may not sound like a lot, but each hole was a 20 foot diameter circle (314 square feet!) that needed to be leveled, cleared of roots, and brushed down to mineral soil. The tees, while smaller, were often situated next to large trees, and so there were many more roots to contend with while shaping them.
A few of excavation sites turned up some forest critters, which we did our best to relocate away from any holes or tees.
To avoid the forest underbrush reclaiming the holes, we needed to cover each clearing with wood chips. Rather than pay for woodchips to surface a total of more than 3000 square feet of hole/tee area, we opted to collect debris from the forest and utilize U-32’s woodchipper to create our surfacing material. Many thanks to Charlie, who helped us greatly in chipping and collecting the wood for this project.
On the last day of the project, our students helped Alpha-test the course and determine what some of the pars should be by playing through all nine holes together.
Currently, the course still needs to have baskets installed, but this will hopefully be happening over the summer and then the U-32 Disc Golf course will be ready for action! Stay tuned!