News

Disc Golf Club pitches course at Berkeley Park

By Bill Moss, Published: September 29, 2017

Fans of disc golf want the city's permission to install a course at Berkeley Mills Park.

The City Council next week will take up a request from the Western North Carolina Disc Golf Club to build the course, which is made up of concrete pads as tees and baskets that the players throw the disc into to complete each hole. A disc golf course typically requires about one acre per hole, Jay McCarthy, of the Disc Golf Club, said in a three-page proposal that describes the sport.

"There's no cost to the city," McCarthy says. He proposes raising the money for the course.

"I feel pretty confident because of the popularity of the sport," he said in an interview. "I should have any problem raising the money. I'm pretty much just asking for the ability to use the park. Our club has very active members. Hendersonville, we have a lot of players, Hendersonville and Brevard. We'd be taking care of most of the maintenance."

McCarthy says has been talking with  Hendersonville's public works director, Tom Wooten, about his idea for the 60-acre Berekley Mills Park. A master plan completed in 2013 does not include disc golf; McCarthy says he found out about the planning too late to advocate for one.

Formed in 2000, the WNC Disc Golf Club has more than 300 members. It has helped design, install and maintain courses around the area, including those at Fletcher Community Park, Etowah Park and Jackson Park, "the flagship course of our region."

Its first course, at Richmond Hill in Asheville, was a similar model to McCarthy's Berkeley Mills Park proposal. The land was donated and the club paid to build the course. In other cases, McCarthy and his fellow club members have helped design courses.

The item on the agenda notes that no money has been budgeted for a disc golf course but that McCarthy would bring cost estimates. In his proposal he says that a "deluxe 18-hole disc golf course" can be completed for less than the cost of a single tennis or basketball court. Each hole would need two 5x12-foot tees made of concrete pads or natural material like sand, gravel or mulch. Baskets are mounted on pipes that slide inside an anchor pipe; McCarthy recommends one or two additional anchor pipes both to reduce soil erosion and make add to the variety for players similar to moving the hole on a golf course putting green.

Maintenance usually requires grass mowing and dead tree removal. "Our club would be eager to help out in any way possible and to maintain the course as a trash-free zone," said McCarthy, who lives in Cedar Mountain. A quality assurance supervisor at Gaia Herbs in Brevard, McCarthy says "disc golf is my second fulltime job."

He says he spends all of his time outside of his day job advocating for disc and helping communities and rec departments design and maintain disc golf courses.

"A disc golf course would provide an inexpensive form of recreation for people of all age and skill levels and be a much needed addition to the current recreational opportunities in the county," he said in his proposal.

It's a growing sport accessible to everyone. "Because disc golf is so easy to understand and enjoy, no one is excluded," McCarthy said. "Players merely match their pace to their capabilities and proceed from there."

North Carolina has 220 disc golf courses, the fourth most in the U.S.