Best Overstable Fairway Drivers Disc Golf. The combination of its flat overstable profile and gyro™ technology allows it to resist turn and experience a strong reliable fade. · 5y · edited 5y.
Discraft Disc Golf Discs Disc Type_Fairway/Control Driver from 1010discs.com
Backhand throwers will love the hellfire’s predictable hyzer lines and dependable fade. The hellfire features a true flat top and feels great in your hand. The dga hellfire overstable fairway driver is a great utility disc, perfect for rollers and overhand shots as well as handling any wind conditions.
While it’s not the fastest disc, the teebird is loved for its accuracy, control, and ability to. To my surprise, the highest rated disc golf disc is a speed 7 fairway driver. Whether a seasoned player needing a special utility disc, or a new player. Overall though yeah literally the best $150 i ever spent on disc golf.
McCray’s heart was stopped for four minutes but doctors resuscitated him; “we were in the right place at the right time”
February 7, 2022 by Charlie Eisenhood in News with comments
JohnE McCray. Photo: Latitude 64
After suffering a major heart attack at a disc golf tournament on Saturday, the 49-year-old 2016 Masters Worlds and 2018 US Masters champion JohnE McCray is recovering at a hospital in Florida.
Over the weekend, McCray was playing at the Barnett Park Championships in Orlando, a B-Tier that he’s won 11 times since 2003, when he started complaining of chest pain midway through the round. He’d recently suffered an injury to the area, so his wife Jennifer started to rub his chest, believing that the issue was muscular. When he got to the teepad on hole 13, “he just turned pale,” said Jennifer, who realized he was in need of medical attention. A doctor on the card ahead of JohnE recognized that he was likely having a heart attack and immediately called 911.
When the ambulance arrived, he was still coherent, but the medics were not able to find his pulse. He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. Once there, his heart fully stopped. “They tried the chest compressions, and that wasn’t working,” said Jennifer. “So they had to use the defibrillators.”
Fortunately, JohnE was able to be resuscitated after approximately four minutes with a stopped heart. He was sedated, put onto a ventilator, and given emergency surgery to place stents in his arteries, which were 100% blocked.
“The doctor told me that we were in the right place at the right time, or he wouldn’t have made it through,” said Jennifer.
On Sunday, he was gradually taken off of life support and is now able to breathe on his own with stable blood oxygen levels. He is able to hold a normal conversation, although Jennifer said that he is still “stuck on Saturday” — he still believes it is the day that his heart attack happened. A stopped heart can cause brain damage, but doctors have told JohnE and Jennifer that he should make a full neurological recovery and that some confusion at this stage is normal.
Physically, it will take time for JohnE to recover. He will not be able to play disc golf for at least three months. “Everything’s looking good, though we do have some significant damage to the right side of his heart,” said Jennifer, who already spoke to Jeff Spring of the Disc Golf Pro Tour about canceling JohnE’s Las Vegas Challenge and Texas swing registrations. She has been with JohnE in the hospital 12 hours a day while driving 90 minutes to and from her home each day to serve as a caregiver for her mother. “I’m just doing what I have to do as a wife and just going to get through it. Lots of coffee,” she joked.
JohnE has maintained a positive attitude as well. “He asked me who won the tournament,” said Jennifer. “‘Who won? Who won? It should have been me!’ I told him it was Nick Masters and he said, ‘Oh, ok. That’s fine.’” He also said that he could have finished the tournament and that they should have waited to take him to the hospital after he finished his round.
JohnE, who is “perfectly healthy, eats clean, and exercises,” has a family history of heart issues. His mother died of heart failure, and exactly one year to the day before JohnE’s heart attack, his sister passed away due to heart problems. She had been on the waiting list for a transplant.
The disc golf community has offered an outpouring of support to JohnE online. “We just want to say thank you to everybody for all their help,” said Jennifer. “We just want to tell everybody thank you.”
Updates on JohnE’s status are being posted to his Facebook page. You can donate money to him for medical expenses through his disc golf website by clicking the “donate” button on the left-hand side of the page.
March 11, 2022 by Charlie Eisenhood in Opinion with comments
Innova’s new “Mid Disc 3” AKA Metal Warrior, a re-release of the Discmania MD3.
Welcome to Ultiworld Disc Golf’s mailbag!
The mailbag is for subscribers only, which helps keep me committed to writing it every week. It will reward subscribers with a weekly column they can count on. And it will allow us to offer a free one-month Mini subscription — which includes access to our Discord server, bonus Upshot podcast segments, exclusive articles, the Cash Line newsletter, and more — for the best question, email, or comment we get and publish in the Mailbag. If you’re already a subscriber, you get a free extra month (or a discount). If you’re not, you can come in and check out the benefits.
You can email me anytime at [email protected] with questions, comments, ideas — whatever you’ve got.
Q: What is your opinion on Innova re-releasing the most popular Discmania molds as “new” Innova discs? I have pretty mixed feelings about it and would love to hear your thoughts. On the one hand, it makes total business sense. Those molds were (and are) incredibly popular, and since they own the molds, why not release them? On the other hand, it gives me a real sour feeling for a couple reasons. First is the fact that part of the reason for the split was that Innova wasn’t able to dedicate enough time to making those molds for Discmania (but is happy to make the time to make them for themselves). Second is the whole naming process. They could have at least tried to be subtle and left off the “original fairway disc” and “original midrange disc.” I’d also love to know what Jussi and the folks at Discmania think about it.
– Zac T.
A: Discmania is unlikely to come out and say anything about this, but do we really need to get a statement from them to know how they feel about this?
Mailbag: Innova Re-Releasing Discmania Discs, No More Stakes, Worried About Eagle?, Paywalling Post-Pro is only available to Ultiworld Subscribers
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BEECH MOUNTAIN — Beech Mountain Resort has shared its lineup for the 2022 summer concert series, featuring Americana favorites Shakey Graves, The Head and the Heart, and Watchhouse. The series will return to the North Carolina ski resort monthly from June through August.
The summer concert series kicks off on June 18 with Shakey Graves, alongside rising Kentucky outfit Bendigo Fletcher. The following month, The Head and the Heart will perform at Beech Mountain on July 16 with rock duo Illiterate Light. Finally, the summer music series wraps on August 13 with Watchhouse alongside bluegrass mainstays The Steeldrivers.
The 2022 return of the Beech Mountain Summer Concert Series comes after a pandemic-altered program in 2021. Last year, the resort staged pod concerts from Tedeschi Trucks, Umphrey’s McGee and Greensky Bluegrass. With COVID cases continuing to decline, organizers will revert to the traditional general admission format for this coming summer.
About Shakey Graves w. Bendigo Fletcher
The prehistory of Shakey Graves exists in two overstuffed folders. Inside them, artifacts document an immense era of anonymous DIY creativity, from 2007 through 2010 – the three years before Roll The Bones came out and changed his life.
There are stencils, lyrics, drawings, prototypes for concert posters, and even a zine. The latter, which Graves – aka Alejandro Rose-Garcia – wrote and illustrated, tells the tale of a once-courageous, now retired mouse who must journey to the moon to save his sweetheart. At the time, he envisioned the photocopied storybook as a potential vessel for releasing his music.
In this lode of unreleased ephemera, CD-Rs are the most bountiful element. There are dozens of burned discs with widely varying track lists, loosely resembling what would become the Austin native’s 2011 breakout debut Roll the Bones. For Rose-Garcia, who’s long loved the incongruous art form of sequencing strange mixtapes for friends, his own record was subject to change every time he burned a disc for somebody. Consistency didn’t matter, he asserts, because there was no demand or expectations.
In the shadows self-doubt that surrounds any artist’s first record, Rose-Garcia had a fantasy: he releases Roll the Bones, only 10 people hear it, it’s rediscovered a decade later by Numero Group, hailed as before-its-time, and finds an audience as a lost treasure. He still plays that scenario through his mind like an alternative reality.
Of course, that’s far from what actually materialized. Roll the Bones was released on the first day of 2011 without a lick of promotion advancing it. It was simply thrust into the world as a decapod of perplexingly memorable, narrative-wrapped songs with a mysterious cover and no information about the artist… only available on the relatively new platform of Bandcamp.
That year, an editor at Bandcamp made it a featured album for a month and from there it stayed in the website’s top selling folk albums evermore. The record has since seen well over 100,000 units sold – even while being available for free download. In the “Supported By” section of the Roll the Bones Bandcamp page, you can endlessly click “more” and squares of avatars will keep showing up until you grow tired and stop.
“If you discover something for yourself, it will always hold more water because it’s tied to memory and coincidence,” Rose-Garcia reasons as to why he never pushed Roll the Bones onto a wider marketplace. “It gives you a sense of ownership as a listener.”
On “Sugar in the Creek”—the groove-heavy opening track to Fits of Laughter—Bendigo Fletcher simultaneously explore those inner and outward tensions, presenting a sweetly rambling dream of escape from the chaos of the modern world. “That song partly has to do with my fantasy of living off the land and how magical that would be,” says Anderson. “I’m from the suburbs, and over the years I’ve made friends who have family farms and I’m really drawn to that way of life, even though I know it’s not all flowers.” One of the album’s most fantastically unhinged moments, “Evergreen” cycles through a series of spellbinding tonal schisms, cresting at a chorus lyric that speaks to the urgency of self-preservation (“I do believe I’m coming around again/When I don’t think of anybody other than myself”). “I wrote ‘Evergreen’ in the early stages of admitting to myself that medical school was a path that looked way more obscured than working to make records,” says Anderson. “I was also getting into self-care methods for the first time in my life, and realizing that you have to take time for yourself in order to be the best and truest version of yourself for everyone else—so in a way, that’s a form of service.” And on “Astro Pup,” Bendigo Fletcher deliver an epic heartbreak anthem spiked with heavenly harmonies and radiant banjo melodies, its lyrics illuminating the ingenuity of Anderson’s self-effacing wit (“I am dog hair all over your bed/I live in the house of the misbehaved”).
As Bendigo Fletcher’s first time working with an outside producer, Fits of Laughter draws much of its freewheeling energy from the deliberately unfussy nature of their recording sessions. “Going into working with Ken, we felt confident that we wanted to retain the jangly sweetness of the music we’ve made in the past,” says Anderson, who created Bendigo Fletcher’s 2015 debut EP Consensual Wisdom on his own and later filled out the band’s lineup in a process he describes as “a gradual adding of members who are all natural friends.” “There’s loose ends and missed beats that we didn’t intend to make happen, but those moments always feel really special when they’re resolved—it sounds like a band actually playing together,” he adds.
In expounding on the observational quality of his songwriting, Anderson points to some invaluable insight gleaned from Dr. Tim Lake, a renowned musician and composer with whom he studied banjo back in college.
“Tim’s a great symbol of Kentucky to me—someone who tells it like is, but is also a very true-hearted and generous person,” says Anderson. “He really drove home the idea that in order to be a thoughtful musician and songwriter, especially if you want to play folk music, you have to be a student of history and the world around you.” Naming John Prine among his formative influences, Anderson has since fully devoted himself to that approach. “Songs seem to spark from those moments of responding to the mundane and sometimes bewildering aspect of the human experience,” he says. “In the past few years I’ve taken to manual-labor jobs so that I can do that while I’m stacking apples or whatever else. If a lyric ever comes into my head and makes me laugh or makes me tear up, I know I need to build it into something that’s going to be fun to sing over and over again.”
Through the lifespan of Bendigo Fletcher, Anderson has found that those spontaneously composed lyrics tend to resonate most powerfully with the audience. And in sharing “Fits of Laughter” with the world, the band hopes to guide listeners toward a deeper trust in their own intuition and instinct.
“There’s always going to be other people’s opinions and judgments and ideas on how to live, and more often than not, those ideas come from a place of love” says Anderson. “But ultimately every person knows what truth feels like, as opposed to artifice or putting up walls to get through something you feel you’re expected to do. I suppose these songs are sort of my offering to others, to encourage them to look for that feeling in their own lives, and then follow through on it.”
About The Head And The Heart w/ Illiterate Light
Initially self-released in 2011, The Head And The Heart’s self-titled breakout debut produced instant classics including “Rivers and Roads,” “Down In The Valley” and “Lost In My Mind” (#1 at AAA) and is now Certified Gold. Their next two albums, 2013’s Let’s Be Still and 2016’s Signs of Light, settled into Billboard’s Top 10 albums chart, with Signs of Light securing the #1 position on Rock Album Charts.
“Honeybee” became a fan favorite and breakout track from the band’s fourth full-length album, Living Mirage, released on Warner Records/Reprise Records to critical praise in 2019. The track has seen 100 million streams globally with weekly streams more than 1 million in the U.S.
The band’s high energy live show has sold out six previous Red Rocks and established their status as a touring powerhouse, having landed prime time mainstage slots at Coachella, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.
They have appeared in Cameron Crowe’s Roadies, with music featured in countless other commercials, films and TV, among them Corona, Silver Linings Playbook and more. In total, the band has performed 15 times on national television including appearances on Ellen, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Austin City Limits with more to come in the coming months.
Illiterate Light has been stretching boundaries and upending expectations with a captivating blend of soaring indie rock, swirling psychedelia, and atmospheric folk that calls to mind everything from Neil Young and My Morning Jacket to Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses. Recorded with producers Adrian Olsen (Foxygen, Natalie Prass) and Vance Powell (Jack White, Kings Of Leon, Chris Stapleton), the record is blissful and ecstatic, with a mix of raw electric guitars, propulsive drums, and shimmering harmonies that showcases the band’s remarkable live setup—Gorman plays guitar with his hands and synth bass with his feet, while his musical partner, Jake Cochran, plays a standup drum kit, which captures the scintillating energy that’s fueled their journey.
Gorman and Cochran first met while attending college in Harrisonburg, Va., where they discovered a shared passion for sustainable living and community building. After graduation, they took over a local organic farm, spending their days tending crops and working farmer’s markets and their nights performing anywhere they could land (or make) a gig. Dubbing themselves the Petrol Free Jubilee Carnival Tour, the pair would often tour the region on their bikes, sometimes joined by as many as two dozen other cyclists and artists, performing at coffee houses, street corners, rock clubs, and off-the-grid communities. Hailed as “a perfect addition to your summertime playlist” by NPR, the band honed in on their distinctive sound and identity over years of relentless touring, earning dates along the way with the likes of Shakey Graves, Rayland Baxter, Mt. Joy, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, and The Head and The Heart in addition to high-profile festival slots at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, and more.
About Watchhouse w/ Steeldrivers
By the time 2019 came to its fitful end, Andrew Marlin knew he was tired of touring. He was grateful, of course, for the ascendancy of Mandolin Orange, the duo he’d cofounded in North Carolina with fiddler Emily Frantz exactly a decade earlier. With time, they had become new flag bearers of the contemporary folk world, sweetly singing soft songs about the hardest parts of our lives, both as people and as a people. Their rise—particularly crowds that grew first to fill small dives, then the Ryman, then amphitheaters the size of Red Rocks—humbled Emily and Andrew, who became parents to Ruby late in 2018. They’d made a life of this.
Still, every night, Andrew especially was paid to relive a lifetime of grievances and griefs onstage. After 2019’s Tides of a Teardrop, a tender accounting of his mother’s early death, the process became evermore arduous, even exhausting. What’s more, those tunes—and the band’s entire catalog, really—conflicted with the name Mandolin Orange, an early-20s holdover that never quite comported with the music they made. Nightly soundchecks, at least, provided temporary relief, as the band worked through a batch of guarded but hopeful songs written just after Ruby’s birth. They offered a new way to think about an established act.
Those tunes are now Watchhouse, which would have been Mandolin Orange’s sixth album but is instead their first also under the name Watchhouse, a moniker inspired by Marlin’s place of childhood solace. The name, like the new record itself, represents their reinvention as a band at the regenerative edges of subtly experimental folk-rock. Challenging as they are charming, and an inspired search for personal and political goodness, these nine songs offer welcome lessons about what any of us might become when the night begins to break.
“We’re different people than when we started this band,” Marlin says, reflecting on all these shifts. “We’re setting new intentions, taking control of this thing again.”
Nashville, Tenn., is a nexus – a point where tradition and innovation intersect, where commerce collides with art.It may be the only town around where salaried songwriters and full-time session musicians are as common as accountants and schoolteachers. Music is the product, and the factories line the street, from the swank Music Row mini-high-rises to the low-slung Sylvan Park bungalows. And only Nashville could give birth to a band like the SteelDrivers: a group of seasoned veterans –each distinguished in his or her own right, each valued in the town’s commercial community – who are seizing an opportunity to follow their hearts to their souls’ reward. In doing so, they are braiding their bluegrass roots with new threads of their own design, bringing together country, soul, and other contemporary influences to create an unapologetic hybrid that is old as the hills but fresh as the morning dew. This is new music with the old feeling. SteelDrivers fan Vince Gill describes the band’s fusion as simply “an incredible combination.”
Since the release of The SteelDrivers (2008) and Reckless (2010), The SteelDrivers have been nominated for three Grammys, four IBMA awards and the Americana Music Association’s New Artist of the Year. They were presented the International Bluegrass Music Association’s award for Emerging Artist of the Year in 2009. That same year the band spent a week in Georgia as part of the cast in the movie “Get Low”. The movie, that starred Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray, featured a soundtrack that included four tunes by The ‘Drivers. In 2011 the English pop star Adele began performing the SteelDriver song “If It Hadn’t Been For Love” in her live performances. Her opinion of The SteelDrivers is: “They’re a blues, country, bluegrass, swagger band and they are brilliant.” They have been invited to perform on numerous radio and TV shows ranging from The Grand Ole Opry to NPR’s Mountain Stage to the Conan O’Brien show.
Located in the High Country, Beech Mountain Resort is one of the premier outdoor destinations of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the summertime, the resort offers numerous outdoor pursuits including mountain biking, fishing, scenic lift rides, disc golf, and more.
KALAMAZOO, MI — The city of Kalamazoo is introducing some new programs this year at its public parks, including a free disc golf clinic and a Super Smash Bros. gaming league for middle school students.
Kzoo Parks will host the disc golf clinic from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13, at Crane Park. All ages are welcome and no equipment or experience is required to register, according to their website.
“We are testing it out now, just to see,” Kalamazoo Parks and Recreation Special Events Coordinator Kya Mitchell said. “But, hopefully, this is something that we can do multiple times throughout the year.”
Members of the Professional Disc Golf Association will be in attendance to teach basic skills of the sport, like disc golf driving, approach throws and putting, according to Kzoo Parks.
Portable baskets and discs will be available at the clinic for everyone to use. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers said attendees should follow CDC and local health officials’ guidelines. If the weather moves the event indoors, the free clinic will be held at Centerpoint Church, 2595 10th Street N.
For those who would like to play a full round, a handful of disc golf courses are in the Kalamazoo area including at Knollwood Park, Spring Valley Park and Red Arrow Golf Course, all of which are free to use. Maps to area disc golf courses will be available at the event.
”We look forward to bringing a new program and seeing how it goes; for it to continue to grow,” Mitchell said. “Hopefully, we’’ll have multiple sessions of disc golf in the future just by introducing people to a new skill index and/or activity.“
To register for the event, head to kzooparks.org/discgolf.
In addition to disc golf, another new activity added to Kzoo Parks programs this fall will showcase Western Michigan University’s esports arena.
Middle school gamers are invited to the esports arena, located at 798 Oakland Drive on WMU’s East Campus, for a monthlong league centered around popular fighting game Super Smash Bros.
Related: Competitive video gaming arena unveiled at Western Michigan University
The program will run from Oct. 11 to Nov. 16. Space is limited to the first 12 students to sign up from each school.
Participating schools include Hillside Middle School, Linden Grove Middle School, Maple Street Magnet School for the Arts, Milwood Middle School, St. Augustine Cathedral School, The Gagie School, St. Monica School and Kalamazoo Christian Middle School.
The first five weeks of the season will start with matches held weekly, on either Mondays or Tuesday evenings, according to the Kzoo Parks website.
Participants will play a minimum of three matches against three different students from the corresponding schools. Schedules for the event will be available on Friday, Oct. 8
Per WMU’s COVID-19 policy, masks upon entrance of the arena are required, and should only come off when exiting outdoors.
To register for the event, offices of participating schools will have forms and more information available.
For any other questions about local parks and recreational programming, call Kalamazoo Parks and Recreation at 269-337-8521.
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Many students have grown tired of dragging themselves to Unipol and have instead taken up one of the many “new” sports that have become increasingly popular and accessible in the last two years. Critic talked to people involved in these rising stars of the Dunedin sports scene to find out why bouldering, disc golf, and women’s ice hockey are some of the fastest growing activities in the city, and how you too can ditch the monotony of the gym for a more engaging workout.
Bouldering
Bouldering involves climbing on small rock formations (2-10m high), or artificial walls, without any ropes or harnesses. People have been doing it for as long as we’ve looked up at boulders and decided we wanted to be at the top of them, but with the opening of a new climbing gym on Moray Place in 2021 and the debut of climbing as a sport at last year’s Olympics, more students than ever are giving bouldering a go.
David Sheppard is the climbing officer of the Otago University Tramping Club and has been climbing for over ten years “from the world stage in Italy, high up on Moir’s Mate in Fiordland and to our local crag at Long Beach”. David describes bouldering as “an independent challenge, just you and the wall”, adding that when you finish a climb “there are an endless number of new routes to try with different styles and difficulties, you can never get bored.”
David says that the bouldering gym that used to exist in Dunedin would often be empty, but nowadays at Resistance Climbing there is “always a handful of people and it’s especially busy during the evenings”. He attributes this to climbing’s inclusion in the Tokyo Olympic Games, and to the new gym being welcoming to both experts and beginners.
Arlo, a second-year student, and Zak, a third-year student, have both been bouldering for less than a year. They agree that having a local climbing gym has made the sport far more accessible to beginners. Arlo believes that despite being very physical, it often doesn’t feel like exercise simply “because it’s so fun”. Zak also thought that the grading system “really helps track improvement as you progress”.
David believes that climbing is “going from a fringe sport to more in the mainstream”. Zak and Arlo also told Critic that as more people convince their friends to give it a go, and those friends convince their friends, the sport will continue to grow in popularity, with Zak adding that “you’ll be very sore but it’s worth it.”
Disc Golf
While a disc golf course has existed in Dunedin since 2015, a student club dedicated to the sport was only formed last year. Modern disc golf emerged in the ’60s when students from universities across the US started throwing frisbees at targets in their local parks, including trees, rubbish bins, and presumably each other after they’d had a few drinks. The first official disc golf course in Aotearoa was opened in 1996 in Queenstown and with grants from the rotary club and the council, the Chingford Park Disc Golf Course opened in North East Valley in 2015. The move was indicative of the growing number of people interested in disc golf in the city seven years ago, but Keegan Wells, President of the Otago University Disc Golf Club (OUDGC), says the sport is growing “now more than ever before”.
OUDGC was formed in January 2021, and Keegan describes fellow student Matt Watson as “the driving force” behind the club’s formation. Keegan was new to the sport at the time, but became Vice-President in the club’s first year before being elected president for 2022. Keegan reckons the best things about the sport are its accessibility and sociability. “Getting out into the green park for just 45 minutes a day is not difficult at all, it’s not a huge commitment like other sports where you have to play tournaments in Christchurch. Thus making it incredibly accessible to heaps of people.”
Finella O’Leary, who is in charge of the club’s social media, describes disc golf as “a great way to meet new people, get out of the house and have a break from studying”. Finella said her favourite thing about the sport was “can-a-hole on a Saturday arvo”, referring to a version of the game where players sink a can of booze after each hole. She sees the sport overtaking golf in the next five years, with golf courses being turned into parks “where holes are converted to chain baskets and tees are converted to… well, tees may stay the same.”
While it may not overtake traditional golf anytime soon, the sport is certainly increasing in popularity in Dunedin. According to Keegan, “more people are playing the courses, buying their own discs and getting councils to set up official courses”. A new course at Brockville Park, out near Kaikorai Valley, will hopefully attract even more new students to the sport. “I think disc golf is going to continuously grow all over New Zealand and at the Uni specifically.”
Ice Hockey
Ice hockey is arguably one of the oldest sports in the Otago region, having been played here for around 80 years. And yet, until two years ago, Dunedin didn’t have a women’s team, and any women wanting to tear it up on the ice had to join the Southern Storm, which had players from all across Otago and could mean travelling four hours for training. It is the only local women’s league in the country.
Angelique Mawson, who has represented New Zealand in ice hockey for a decade, as a player and then as an assistant coach, is the manager of the women’s league in Dunedin. She says that the decision to form a women’s team just for Dunedin was a natural one. In addition to the logistical nightmare of organising a team across multiple cities, “the numbers in Dunedin were growing for women’s hockey.” The Dunedin Thunder women’s team was officially created in 2020, giving even more incentive for local women to pick up the sport, and Angelique says it is “quickly growing and gaining a lot of new players”.
“Now’s the prime for girls to join,” says Rina Watt, who is an Otago Uni student, assistant captain for the Dunedin Thunder and a player on the national team, the Ice Fernz. “The NZ Ice Hockey Federation is really looking to promote more growth for younger girls so there’s a lot of hype.” Rina has been playing ice hockey for 13 years, and reckons the Dunedin Thunder have a “great team culture”, saying that they are “a strong team with a great range of ages and strengths, so we all bring something different to the team.”
Angelique says Covid-19 has made playing internationally difficult, and that it might be hard for the national teams to “regain the momentum” they had before the pandemic. However, she’s proud of the growth the sport has seen locally, particularly with the women’s league where multiple clubs can play against one another within Dunedin. Their annual “Give it a Go Day” is also popular, providing an opportunity for women (and any other) newcomers to take to the ice and try this exciting sport for themselves.
Tossing a frisbee between friends on South Lawn might be a fun way to unwind, but some WKU students are taking the frisbee toss to the next level.
Disc golf continues to grow in popularity among college students nationwide. The objective is to land a specialized frisbee disc in a basket across 18 different holes, similar to a golf course.
WKU has its own course behind Pearce Ford Tower and its own disc golf team that holds practices at nearby parks. Ryan Messenger, the captain of WKU’s team, began playing at an early age and fell in love with the sport thanks to the kindness of another player.
A member of the WKU Disc Golf Club collects his disk from the basket. (ARTHUR TRICKETT-WILE)
“I got interested in disc golf pretty early,” Messenger said. “I was 12 or 13 and me and my dad would always see the baskets in the park, [but] we never really knew what it was. We asked someone about it and he explained the basic rules, then he actually gave us one of those discs. The next week we went out and played and we’ve been hooked ever since.”
Messenger has many memories from his time in the sport, but his time as a part of a successful doubles pairing back in high school sticks out over the rest.
“It [was a] doubles event called the Northwest Tennessee Doubles Championship, and one of my best friends, Jake Hutchinson and I, won that tournament 3 years in a row,” Messenger said. “That was my last big tournament in high school and I was really excited to be able to win that with my best friend.”
Dalton Sturgill, a member of the WKU Disc Golf Club, throws a disk on Thursday, Sept. 30 of 2021 while playing the Kereiakes Park course. (ARTHUR TRICKETT-WILE)
Dalton Sturgill, a freshman, is also excited about this year’s team and loves the sense of community the roster provides.
“The big thing about getting into disc golf here was the community,” Sturgill said. “Just making sure that you’re pushing each other, and yourself, to be better at the sport that you enjoy to play.”
Sturgill has plenty of memories and stories from his time with the team, but winning tournaments stands out above the rest.
“Back home I entered a lot of C tier and B tier tournaments and my favorite memory while playing those is winning one,” Sturgill said. “It felt incredible to just know that you played better than everybody else and that the competition was there, yet you still came out on top.”
Jared Grant, a junior, shared that his favorite part of competing with the team is the travel opportunities it provides.
“What I enjoy most about playing here at WKU is competing collegiately and traveling, mainly across the east coast just to play other universities,” Grant said. “My favorite memory playing disc golf here at WKU is probably when I got my first hole in one with the team [at] Kereiakes Park.”
Messenger has high expectations for his team this year and thinks his roster may have a shot to qualify for the Collegiate National Championship.
“Our ultimate goal is to qualify for the Collegiate National Championship,” Messenger said. “To qualify, you have to compete in a regional qualifier and secure a bid. We’re running our own qualifier here in the middle of November, so we hope to have a pretty good advantage there.”
Sports reporter Rob Holmes IV can be reached at [email protected].
FORT MADISON – An effort is underway to secure funding to put a 9-hole disc golf course on the grounds at Ivanhoe Park in Fort Madison.
On Saturday, a group led by Robert Ellison of Fort Madison put up a temporary course at the park with about 30 people playing. Ellison is trying to secure grant funding through several outlets to help offset the $12,500 estimated cost to build the course.
Fort Madison Kiwanis is working with Ellison as that group takes steps to start making an investment in the park. Other groups such as Fort Madison Rotary, Tri State Rodeo, and Old Settler’s Association already have made substantial contributions to three other parks in the city.
Ivanhoe also has a baseball facility that is getting contributions and maintenance help from Doherty Baseball Academy.
Kiwanis is looking to function as a non-profit support mechanism for park efforts and to help with upkeep, but is also partnering with Ellison to bring the course to the park. There is a 54-hole course that winds through Rodeo Park, but this one will be for the more recreational players.
Disc golfers look through a trailer full of discs as part of a Saturday test of a 9-hole disc golf course at Ivanhoe Park. Fort Madison resident Robert Ellison and Fort Madison Kiwanis are trying to raise $12,500 to build the park. Several grants are in the works and Kiwanis is donating $1,000 to the project. Photo by Chuck Vandenberg/PCC
Ellison said Saturday’s event was geared toward seeing how the course played with some pretty seasoned players going around the course.
“It’s a trial run to get basket locations and tee pad locations,” Ellison said. “We want to see where the discs could potentially go and if we need to make any adjustments.”
Sam Vidal, the president of Fort Madison Kiwanis, said there were enough people in the community involved in disc golf that it makes sense to have another course at the park on the city’s west side.
“I think we believe there’s enough people in the community who are already actively involved in disc golf,” Vidal said.
“But Rodeo (Park) is more of a treacherous course, this is something friendly for kids. So if you wanted to bring your kids down for the afternoon, you could easily walk through the course and you don’t have to climb through the woods like you would at Rodeo.”
Ellison said he and his boys were up playing at Rodeo and said some of the holes were extremely difficult for kids. He said on a Saturday where he was helping with a Kiwanis cleanup, the gears started turning.
“I just was out here helping Kiwanis clean up one day and I thought, this would be a great location,” Ellison said.
Ellison said the majority of the costs would be for installation of the concrete tee-pads. Those nine pads would cost about $7,500 professionally installed.
Ellison recently applied for a Freeport McMoran community grant and said he would find out this week if that has been accepted.
Vidal said that grant may not cover the full cost of the project. Vidal said Kiwanis has agreed to put $1,000 into the project. Ellison said he has applied for additional grants from other groups and hopes to have funding secured soon.
He said the disc golf people would probably also play a role helping keep the park clean.
“The disc golf community is very good about picking up their trash. You get a lot of people parking and just throwing stuff out the window, and we’d help keep things clean.”
Kiwanis is also looking at doing some additional landscape work and painting in the park. Long-term plans could include an additional shelter house, refurbishing the current shelter house and upgrading the basketball court with up-to-date equipment.
Prepare like you would if you were caddying for a pro.
March 8, 2022 by Steve Andrews in Instruction, Opinion with comments
Hailey King and caddy, Lindsay, at the 2021 DDO. Photo: DGPT
I like caddying nearly as much as playing. Some of my favorite disc golf memories are about helping a good friend lock down the club championship or helping my doubles partner in a singles match during a team competition. Most importantly, spending some time as a caddy really highlighted what I needed in my own game to play my best.
For a long time in traditional golf, caddies were afterthoughts. They carried the bags of top players in professional events but were seldom seen as crucial to the outcome. For years, the standard, only somewhat joking, description of a caddy’s job was the “Three Ups” — Show Up, Keep Up, and Shut Up. Since small payouts were the hallmark of the opening decades of professional golf, players usually traveled without a caddy and simply found someone at the course where an event was being held.
However, as the PGA Tour evolved, caddies evolved from largely invisible bag porters to crucial factors in players’ successes. Perhaps the first superstar caddy was Angelo Argea, who carried Jack Nicklaus’ bag for 20 years and was there for 40 of the Golden Bear’s victories. Jeff “Squeaky” Medlen caddied for Nick Price for all three of his major victories. When Price couldn’t make it to the 1991 PGA Championship, Medlen picked up the bag of the last player off the waitlist who got in so late he had never seen the course: an unknown named John Daly, who Medlen then caddied to his first major title. It was an unbelievable victory that was sometimes credited to Medlen’s guidance as well as Daly’s overwhelming power.
Since then, PGA caddies have become superstars. Many caddies have forged long-term partnerships with players and become legitimate celebrities. For example, Jim “Bones” Mackay has been at Phil Mickelson’s side since he turned professional in the early 1990s. Carrying the bag for Tiger Woods is one of the highest-profile jobs in the game, and has passed from Mike “Fluff” Cowan to Steve Williams to Joe LaCava, who had caddied for Fred Couples for two decades before caddying for Dustin Johnson. The shifting partnerships of players and caddies drives media speculation about how a new caddy may shape a player’s career. Changing caddies is sometimes more dramatic than changing equipment manufacturers.
Disc golf has not yet seen the rise of the superstar caddy. Most players carry their own bag or rely on a friend or spouse (or mom, in the case of Gannon Buhr!). Some disc golfers simply hand their bags off to a spectator who is standing near the driving range. This is how Justin Brosmer, one of my favorite playing partners in my home club, wound up on the bag of A.J. Risley at the 2019 GBO. In that case, Justin’s job was merely to keep up and give good vibes (and he somehow got almost as much face time on the live broadcast as Risley).
But a caddy can be more than someone that totes equipment around the course. Thinking like a professional caddy can let you help your friends and teammates and can also teach you to play better when you are on your own.
Pregame Partner
There are lots of ways a caddy can help before the round begins. These can be as simple as playing catch as part of the warmup or going to get all the discs the player threw in the field so they can putt rather than spending time collecting their discs. If you know the player well and have an eye for their swing, you can see how they are doing in warmups and talk about technique. You can also discuss strategy before the round – the challenges they might face or the tough choices they may have to make mid-round.
If time permits, a caddy can be essential in scouting the battlefield. Squeaky Medlen, even though he knew there was a good chance Nick Price would have to pull out of the 1991 PGA, still walked every inch of the course to build his yardage book. PGA Tour yardage books are full of calculations from every possible angle because it is important to have information you can’t get from a rangefinder during a round – how far is the green past the turn, how much room is there behind the pin, how wide is the fairway, how far is it across the pond, how much room do I have to lay up before the OB? Disc golfers may not need all the details found in a PGA yardage book, but a great caddy will have the most important numbers ready to go. And, if you are scouting a course for yourself, you should too.
An example yardage book.
Everything in Its Place
Job #1 of a caddy is to make sure that everything their player needs is in the bag and ready to go. That means discs are clean and dry, and there are minis, snacks, water, towels, and whatever else the day may call for. If the player wants to know distances, the rangefinder must be ready to go for every shot. A good caddy will know the weather report and make sure to have an umbrella if there is any chance of rain. Yes, the player is ultimately responsible for all of this, but the caddy’s job is to handle the logistics so the player can concentrate on scoring.
This is the same thinking you need to apply to your own game. Think ahead and make sure that all your equipment is there and ready to go. Make sure that you know exactly where everything is so you can get it quickly – snacks in the left pocket, towels in the right, minis up top, range finder on the lanyard in the right drink holder. Any system can work, but you don’t want to be digging through your bag searching when it is your time to go.
Know What Information You Need
One of the worst mistakes in golf can be thinking you know what shot you are going throw before you get to your lie. Sometimes this is walking up thinking you have a tap-in only to feel crushed when you are 50 feet out with a weird stance. More commonly, it is deciding your shot is a turnover before you examine the situation, only realizing that the wind has changed as your disc is sailing towards the OB just right of the basket.
When I am caddying, I encourage my player to start every shot from a blank slate. I want to provide a shorthand of the crucial facts: distance, slope, wind, hazards, and – if the player wants it – the situation. My job is to get all this information as fast as I can and relay it as concisely as possible. Last year, I was caddying for my friend Josh in the final nine of our club championship. In the fairway on one of the long closing holes, I said to him: “345 feet out, uphill, left to right wind, can’t go right because of OB but as much room as you want on the left, you are up two, and they probably can’t birdie from their position.” In one quick sentence I tried to condense the context of the shot. At that point we took a moment to talk about disc and shot selection, but he knew everything he needed to make his choice. He decided to cheat out to the left side with his big forehand, making sure to aim wide enough to stay left of the basket even with the wind pushing him right. He threw it great, made the putt, and padded a comfortable lead.
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You can tailor this information to whatever the player prefers. For example, some players don’t want to know the score or don’t want to know your thoughts about what the competitors might do. That’s fine. Get them whatever information they need to make their decision.
This is also a great habit to get into for your own game. Get into the habit of having the essential information before you throw – distance, wind, slope, and as much situational data as you need. Go over these details as you are visualizing your shot. So often, players don’t check and then kick themselves for not considering the crucial piece of information that would have made the difference. You cannot slow down the pace of play, but you may discover you can play faster and more confidently when you know the information you need and have a system to get it quickly.
Ask the Right Question
As a caddy, I seldom suggest a disc or a shot unless asked. But I will ask simple questions like “what are you trying to do?” This question, which seems so obvious, is one so many players seldom ask themselves. They are either throwing with no real vision of what they want or don’t realize what they want is impossible, unnecessary, or incredibly risky. Many players throw and then say, “I have no idea why I threw that disc” or “I have no clue what I was hoping for.” Asking a player these kinds of simple questions can be the best service of a caddy. It forces the player to really visualize (and verbalize) what they want to do. This often produces better shots.
All players get tunnel vision. We see a tight shot between two trees straight at the basket and don’t pause to look for other options. Sometimes just saying, “is that the only shot?” can snap us out of throwing a shot we think we have to throw and help us see safer routes. These are also important things to ask yourself. Don’t just throw the first shot you see, take a second to look at various lines and stances that might offer other ways to put it close.
Captain of the Cheer Team
One of the most important jobs of a caddy is helping to keep a player’s mental game on track. This involves being positive about the shot selection, listening to complaints, and preventing negative self-talk. Navigating a player’s negative thoughts and knowing how to help them focus on the task at hand rather than dwelling on past mistakes or bad breaks can be a challenge. The best thing to say is “I love it” when a player decides on a shot. The choice is made, and confidence is often more important than disc selection. If it doesn’t work out, it is important to remind them they went through their routine and that is all they can do. The process is under their control, not the outcome.
This is where experience as a caddy has helped my own game the most. One of my biggest flaws is being hard on myself during a round and spiraling into a dark mental place. I say awful things to myself as a player I would never say as a caddy. I always take great care of my players as a caddy but often took horrible care of myself when I was playing. Now I try to talk to myself like a caddy, saying that I made a good move on it, I can get up and down from there, and that there’s a lot of golf left to play. Sometimes, I need to tell myself a tough truth, but at least I can phrase it in a way that is forward looking rather than just self-critical.
The key to being a great caddy is always looking for ways to help a player shoot the best round they can, knowing when to step in and when to step back. You need to look for ways to reduce stress on them, help solve problems before they happen, and be prepared for everything that might happen on the course. Thinking this way also teaches a lot of great lessons for when you are carrying your own bag.
That line resonates with a well-known 1989 baseball film starring Kevin Costner, who plays a farmer who transforms part of his Iowa cornfield into a baseball diamond.
The Montgomery County Legislature can be credited with the same thought when it authorized the creation of a disc golf course within the Thomas H. Burbine Memorial Forest on Corbin Hill Road in Charleston.
The investment, which was approved for $9,500 and not to exceed $13,000 last August, was completed and opened to the public last October. On Saturday, the county legislature’s move was celebrated as 72 members of the Professional Disc Golf Association [PDGA] took part in the first-ever Blues at Burbine two-round tournament.
“It’s a chance to show off the course, it gets people out here this whole week,” tournament director Mark Hay said. “They’ve been practicing for the tournament and then you hope they are like ‘I want to come back and keep playing it.’”
Marcia Focht of Vestal made a return trip to the Burbine course for competition after a practice round last month.
“It is so beautiful and peaceful,” Focht said. “My husband, who doesn’t play, sometimes accompanies me on a practice round. He thought this was one of the nicest ones he’d ever been too.”
An avid competitor, Focht had a plan to compete at Burbine on Saturday.
“I try and fill every single weekend with an event. I saw this on the [PDGA] map and I realized I had never played this course, so I signed up,” Focht said. “It’s got excellent tees, tee pads, very good signage so you know what you’re doing, where you’re going. It seems like it’s very fair, even though there are a ton of trees — that just makes it challenging.”
Focht captured the advanced women’s title with a score of 143, 29-over par.
Hay was confident that the Montgomery County investment would pay off — almost immediately.
“The baskets were put in on Oct. 20 last year and when the last basket was put in, we had people here playing from Utica,” Hay said. “We posted on Facebook that we were installing baskets that weekend and they were coming out to play Central Park in Schenectady. On the way back they stopped to see if we were done yet.”
The Burbine Forest Disc Golf Course’s 18-hole set-up, designed by Hay, covers 5,676 feet, and has its own set of natural challenges.
“Anyone can throw a disc or a Frisbee out in a wide open [space],” Hay said. “You might have different challenges or the wind and things like that, but the trees are what create the lines and [the] hazards. It’s why people like woods golf … shaping those shots around the trees.”
“Sometimes you have to get the disc to bend to the left, sometimes you got to get it to the bend to the right. Depending on how you throw a disc, you can get it to shape around the trees. And that’s kind of the allure of playing a woods [course] is hitting that perfect line and getting it to shape around the trees.”
For complete results and more information, visit www.pdga.com
