OXBOW - Bow Valley Park in Oxbow has a new attraction that is already gaining a lot of traction.
Through grants, town support and park proceeds, they have set up a nine-hole disc golf course.
“It’s been a long process,” said recreation manager Lane Nicholls.
Getting the grants and putting in the equipment was a lot of work. Nicholls’ brother-in-law is an avid player, and he came out from Ontario to lay out the course and held a couple classes for people to learn how to play, which were well attended.
“It is good for the town because not much these days is free, and there is no charge for the course,” Nicholls said.
As a father, he knows it can cost a lot to keep children entertained. He has already brought his kids out to play on the course.
“At the end they were exhausted, which is good.”
Much like regular golf, all you need is your walking legs and Frisbees. You don’t even have to be any good.
This modern sport developed in the 1960s, but its origins, according to The Complete Book of Frisbee, are in Bladworth in 1926 as a schoolyard game called tin lid golf.
Much like its modern counterpart, the goal was to get your disc to the predetermined area. In tin lid golf, which Ronald Gibson and his friends played regularly in the Bladworth Elementary School yard, players would throw large tin lids from canned goods, from a far distance away to finally end up in a four-foot circle drawn in the sand.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, the game popped up in Texas and California, but Canada always kept its ties to the sport. Jim Kenner and Ken Westerfield made a course in Queens’s Park Toronto in the 70s, using available objects already present as their holes, starting The Canadian Open Frisbee Championships.
In fact, independently grown, people from all over came up with their own courses, but had no way of letting people know outside their areas. An inconvenience not experienced today because of apps like UDisc, where Oxbow’s course, along with others from all over the world, is registered. On the app you can see courses maps, find out the par, record your scores and compare them to others.
Disc golf may be a new idea to many in the area but it is one that is catching on.
“There was a ton of people out last week. If the town really gets into it we will build another nine holes,” Nicholls said.
The new disc golf course incorporates some of the features from the old golf course that used to be in the park. At hole 4, Nicholls pointed to “that basket is in the old sand trap. Some people would still remember.”
Being in the valley with the disc runs going up the hill, it has an advantage not often seen in Saskatchewan.
“Not many courses around here have the elevation, that is the uniqueness of this course.”
Ideas that might be in the works in the near future are tournaments and night-time golf with glow-in-the-dark elements on the baskets to aim for.
If you do not have a Frisbee or don’t want to invest in a set of your own right away, there are six sets at the town office ready to borrow.
