An 18-hole disc golf course will be coming to Crystal Springs Park in Fairbury. The Fairbury City Council voted to go forward with the project at a meeting on Tuesday, December 20, 2022.
Fairbury currently has a nine-hole disc golf course in McNish Park.
The Elpison Foundation, a disc golf club based in Beatrice, is proposing to partner with the City of Fairbury. Their proposal states, “Our goal is to create an elite-level disc golf course that can host the Nebraska State Championships and/or other highly competitive tournaments annually. We expect these tournaments to bring in nearly 90 or more people from 4-5 states each year. In addition to these tournaments, we anticipate this course engaging many members of the Fairbury community and offering another excellent form of exercise in the area. McNish Disc Golf Course has proved to be a great addition to our community, and we are excited to see how we can continue to push Fairbury forward. The project will be funded primarily through community donations. As an incentive, the course will be offering sponsorships of baskets, tee signs, and course naming rights.”
The Proposal
Professional disc golf player Jonathan Fletcher spoke at the meeting, as well as a meeting of the Public Works Committee that same night, to discuss the proposal. Fletcher is also Fairbury Public School’s assistant girls wrestling coach.
“So I know you’ve played the big name courses, and you’ve been around, “ said Councilperson Phil Rogge. “Will it be a draw for people?”
Fletcher said, “There’s a lot of potential to have both an open style course and a wooded course out there, based on the couple of acres of land that we’re able to use, and not a lot of course have both options.”
Rogge said, “I know we’ve got McNich, and we have a lot of players that come down there.”
Fletcher said the course had the potential to bring players to town, but he also said advertising would be key, “A lot of the local Facebook pages, like LinkedIn, Omaha, the Tri City area, advertising the course on those pages will be a lot more of your guys that like to travel and play, they would come down and play it.”
Fletcher added, “Disc Golf Scene is a website, and on that website is a log of all the courses across the country. And then when you run a tournament, you make a page on that website.”
Regarding tournaments Fletcher noted, “So the bigger ones like your pro tour level tournaments are going to be three days or four days….