While We’re Waiting… Another Tribe walk-off, Weeden’s starting chances, and Cavs draft options
May 19, 2013Turning the focus away from the empty seats
May 19, 2013A historic moment in Cleveland sports history. The first Waiting for Next Year disc golf outing.
Yup. Disc golf. Not a regular, normal ball golf outing but rather its hippie cousin. My persistence had paid finally off. I had annoyed enough people. This was happening.
Saturday morning, Rick, myself and some of the WFNY faithful (including CavsZine editor and Chris Perez look-a-like @WayneEmbrysKids) met up in Akron at Portage Lakes state park to throw some discs at some trees baskets.
I had my concerns about the weather; we had some people traveling for this event and there had been rumors of rain. But the weather couldn’t have been more gorgeous and we had gotten there early enough that the course was mostly empty. Plus, we had six people, which made for even teams.
It was glorious.
The Portage Lakes Disc Golf Association’s website calls the park “the most beautiful disc golf course in Ohio” and the course makes a pretty good case. The course snakes in and out of the woods and the abundant elevation changes can make for some very interesting shots. As you can see from the course map below, each hole had multiple tee pads, for novice players (us!) and pro/veteran players (sometimes the novice tees less than half the hole of the pro tees).
There’s a couple noticeable things about this map. First being, there’s a map. This is no small thing. Not all disc golf courses provide you with a map (which also doubles as the scorecard). The park had a bulletin board that had course news (local tournaments, fund raisers, etc) and boxes filled with score cards and pencils. Being able to find your way around an unfamiliar course can save you a lot of time and aggravation.
Second, see all that blue on the map? That’s a lake. The entire course is on a peninsula. While the lake isn’t in play on every hole, it’s always lurking in the background. Unfortunately, one of our discs went swimming and never came back. It’s the risk you run.
But not only is the course gorgeous, it’s also well maintained. Each basket had a marker pointing towards the next tee pad and each tee pad had a sign with a map of the hole. The course also has steps and walkways built into the woods, allowing you to get up and down the hills a little easier. Again, little things like this are not always available.
If you check out the PLDGA flickr page you can see all the work that went into the making this course. The baskets were often placed in peculiar and challenge positions. In the video below, you can see that the abnormally high basket (about five or feet off the ground) is directly in front of the lake and that we had someone set up to “play defense” and keep any errant shots dry and out of the lake.
The teams were pretty even but Team Ben pulled away from Team Rick on the back nine to win by two strokes. But it didn’t matter who won. You can’t help but be in a good mood after walking around a beautiful park while discussing the Tribe’s hot start or the NBA draft lottery or Jimmy Haslam ripping off his customers.
All in all, the first WFNY disc golf outing was a resounding success. Good times were had, friends were made, discs were lost and trees were accidentally pruned. The great weather really highlighted the beauty and diversity of the park.
It was disc golf.
And it was glorious.
thanks to @wayneembryskids @broccoliphil @thomaswheil and @milesmctwo for coming out and throwing discs w/@rickwfny and myself this AM.
— Ben Cox (@WFNYBen) May 18, 2013
2 Comments
LOVE disc golf. it is pretty big down in Columbus, hopefully it can grow in this area. Only been to the Parma Disc Golf course at State Road Park, it was nice with good signs, but there are too many trees! Would love to check out this course, it looks great.
Course sucks. They ruined a beautiful woods area. The same hippie pot smokers play each week.