Knox County will soon have an 18-hole disc golf course thanks to the efforts of a pair of local dedicated players.
Austin Sievers and Tyler Sanders for years have wished that Knox County had a full 18-hole disc golf course, and on a recent visit to Camp Arthur, located off Washington Avenue, they found the ideal spot on which to build one
“Tyler and I have been playing disc golf for several years, and at the beginning (of 2022) we told ourselves that we really wanted to grow local opportunities for this sport,” Sievers said. “We saw Camp Arthur as a great spot for a tournament-level course, so we reached out to officials there and began to pick their brains, see if this was something they would be interested in.”
Interested, they were, so they challenged Sievers and Sanders to host a trial tournament there. That way, Sievers said, they could garner feedback, gauge interest, before committing to anything permanent.
So they planned a tournament for Dec. 17, one that drew nearly 30 disc golf players from across the state, Sievers said, people of all age groups.
“And not a single person had any negative feedback about the day,” Sievers said. “At the end, we presented Camp Arthur with a check for $800.
“And it was then a unanimous decision by the board to grant us full approval to design a permanent course.”
Sievers, a graduate of South Knox High School who now works for TruScripts in Washington, first picked up the sport while a student at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.
“There was a course close to my apartment, and I just fell in love with it,” he said.
There is a small 9-hole disc golf course at Hillcrest Park, but it boasts but a few holes and isn’t suitable to host a league or competitive tournaments, two things vital in having a thriving disc golf community, Sievers said.
“To really do that, you have to travel to Evansville or Terre Haute, Indianapolis,” Sievers said.