We are disc golfers. We play one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Our sport is one of the cheapest and easiest to pursue and because of that it has the opportunity to be among the most inclusive. Our sport has minimal environmental impact and we are happy to take pieces of land that are unwanted or unsuitable for most other purposes. Not only are we willing to take these unloved areas and shape them into something beautiful for the community, we are also great stewards of the land and organize regular work parties to maintain and improve our courses.

 

Within the global disc golf community the Portland area is considered one of the epicenters of the sport. The Greater Portland area hosts two of the three Disc Golf Tour events west of the Rocky Mountains: the Portland Open at Glendoveer Golf Course in NE Portland and the Beaver State Fling at Milo McIver State Park in Estacada. These events have an immediate economic impact by bringing the Tour to town, with over 20 staff members, traveling vendors, spectators, and more than 100 full-time professional athletes. The popularity of those events also drives year-round tourism as disc golfers from around the world choose Portland as a destination to play the courses they’ve watched the professionals play. The video coverage of these events are watched live around the world by over 50,000 subscribers to the Disc Golf Network as well as via post-produced coverage on YouTube where videos regularly garner well over 100,000 views. These events draw thousands of in-person spectators who line up to watch their favorite pros.

 

All of this amazing activity is happening within the local community yet we have only one course within the city limits, Pier Park. Pier is the third busiest course in the US as of 2021. The previous link is from UDisc, the most popular disc golf scoring app, their most recent reported statistics are from 2022 when 23,436 discrete rounds were tracked at Pier Park. UDisc’s estimate is that 20% of disc golf rounds played are tracked via UDisc, so there was an average of nearly 300 rounds of disc golf played at Pier Park per day.  Those estimates have been anecdotally confirmed by PP&R employees at Pier Park and disc golf has grown since 2022 so the course is undoubtedly seeing even more traffic than that.

 

Charlotte, North Carolina is another mid-sized American city that is considered a hotbed of disc golf activity. The population in Charlotte is ~25% higher than here in Portland but there are 19 courses with a Charlotte address as opposed to our single course.  Another useful metric to gauge the size of the disc golf population is to see how many disc golf specific retailers there are in an area.  Charlotte has one.  Within the city of Portland there are four: All Day Disc Golf​, Disc Golf Depot​, Disc Heroes, and Huk Lab.  Just outside of the city there are two more: Discs and Dice in Troutdale and Disc Junction in Milwaukee.

 

A few other cities of comparable size to Portland are: Baltimore with 557k people, 1 disc golf store, and 7 courses; Albuquerque with 556k people, 2 disc golf stores, and 9 courses; and Sacramento with 530k people, one chain sporting goods store that sells discs, and 7 courses.

 

One area where disc golf surpasses almost all other recreational activities is in how low the barrier to entry is.  With a single $5 disc from the used bins at one of our many local stores a new player can get out on the course and play. Disc golf has the potential to be the most inclusive sport offered at PP&R facilities if courses were added that are accessible to underserved populations. Several organizations within disc golf have recognized that a course can be all that is necessary to transform a community and have set out to do so. The Paul McBeth Foundation has installed courses in Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, Montenegro, Nicaragua, Uganda, and Kenya as well as several US cities in just the past few years. They know that once the initial expense of installing the course has been covered those courses can be played by the community for decades with minimal maintenance and upkeep. Other nonprofit programs such as EDGE and Oregon’s own Uplay have been bringing disc golf into schools since 2002 and 2017 respectively. Both organizations epitomize UPlay’s mission statement of teaching an “affordable, lifelong sport that is playable by all ages, genders, and ability levels…making disc golf accessible to everyone creates a more inclusive and vibrant community.”

 

Disc golf is incredibly affordable for the player but is an even better value as a civic investment.  Installation costs for a disc golf course are nowhere near the price tag of a new skatepark, and all it would cost the city to install a new course in Portland would be the piece of land on which to build it.  Stumptown Disc Golf Club is financially prepared to provide the funds for the baskets and materials for tee pads and signage.  Installation of course assets can be done by volunteers managed by Stumptown Disc Golf Club. Course maintenance is minimal compared to other park installations. Any large swaths of grass would need to be mowed and garbage bins would need to be emptied but most of the maintenance is handled by players, with larger projects being tackled by work parties such as those regularly led by Stumptown at Pier, Milo McIver, and Blue Lake.

 

We don’t need a conventionally desirable piece of land. Timber Park in Estacada is adjacent to a water treatment plant, as is Willamette Park in Corvallis. Trojan Park’s course plays around the cooling ponds of the decommissioned Trojan Point Nuclear Facility. Raptor’s Knoll in British Columbia was built on top of a former garbage dump.  These are all parcels of land that were unlikely to be reborn into popular recreation spaces but for the power of disc golf.  

 

Not only are we happy to take an undesirable piece of land and turn it into something valuable for the community, but we also rehabilitate and restore the land in the process. We would remove garbage and the remnants of campgrounds to prepare the property before opening the course and our continued presence would deter those elements from returning. One of the natural areas in Portland hit hardest by the negative impact of illegal campsites is Colwood Natural Area, which would make an amazing tournament level disc golf course. The groundskeepers of the traditional golf course at Colwood have expressed their support for a disc golf course and the benefit we could have on that property. 

 

Listening to neighbors in St. Johns talk about the transformation that happened at Pier Park through the addition of disc golf is representative of how our sport can positively impact an area.  Pier Park is now a beautiful, well-maintained neighborhood park full of kids and families who feel safe there—when that was not the case before there were hundreds of disc golfers populating the park every day. 

 

As I said to start this letter, we are all disc golfers. We work in various industries and come from different backgrounds with a host of different skill sets and knowledge bases. We are not asking for money to build a course. We need very little maintenance provided by the city. We will clean up and invigorate any piece of land we are allowed to use. And even if the city decides for whatever reason that the course isn’t working out we have very little environmental impact. All of our course assets are easily removable and within a season or two there would be no sign that they had ever been there.  Please allow us to bring this beautiful sport to as many neighborhoods in town as possible. There are plenty of kids living near blighted properties that could be reborn as disc golf courses!

 

Thank you,

Jesse Tomaino

VP Stumptown Disc Golf Club