local-sports

MAURERTOWN — Shenandoah County recently unveiled its new disc golf complex at the county park in Maurertown, a three-course, 54-hole layout that one of the course’s designers said is setting a new standard for courses in the area.

The Limestone Ledges Disc Golf Complex, as the course is now called, replaced the former 18-hole Signal View Disc Golf Course and made its debut on Aug. 2. The brainchild of Woodstock resident Phil Theis and Nathan Hughes, of Stephens City, the new course is a complete overhaul of the former one designed to appeal to disc golfers of all skill levels.

Two 18-hole courses — dubbed “Upper Meadows” and “Lower Forest” — lie on either end of the county park, while the pro-level “Massanutten Monster” course incorporates baskets from both of the shorter courses and spans the entire park. With red, white, blue and gold tees and long and short pins on many holes, Hughes said the complex offers disc golfers the choice of playing 10 different layouts.

“With 10 layouts you get essentially 10 courses where one used to be,” Hughes, a 28-year-old disc golf professional, said on Friday afternoon. “And to me, it’s everything the pros wanted, or could ever ask for, but at the same time it’s not making the everyday guys just come out and beat themselves up.”

The drawback of the former Signal View course, said Jered Hoover, Shenandoah County’s parks and recreation director, was that it was too long for many players who did not want to traverse the entire park to play an 18-hole round of disc golf. Hughes noted that Theis at one point measured the distance from the basket of each hole to the red (beginner) tee of the next and discovered that the distance walked was greater than the distance that was actually being played.

It was Theis who initially approached Hughes and others last year about a new layout idea for the course, and Hughes, who said he’d recently helped design three other courses in the area, teamed up with Theis and Hoover to make the redesign at the county park happen. As Hughes said, that small committee “pulled the trigger, got things going and three months later we had three brand-new courses.”

“It all happened really fast,” Hughes added.

A complete overhaul of the course necessitated a new name, Hoover felt, and after a couple of months of tossing ideas around, they came upon “Limestone Ledges,” an ode to the rock formations that can be found in portions of the park.

While the 18 baskets from the original course were reused — and in most instances, moved to new locations — in the redesign, additional baskets were purchased and installed, as were new signs and signposts for each hole. The planned concrete tee pads have yet to be installed — there will be 58 of them, Hughes said — but should be soon, according to Hoover.

And, Hoover told Shenandoah County supervisors on Tuesday, not a single dollar of county money was spent on the project. As of Friday, Hoover said $26,005 in private donations had been made to help fund the makeover.

Hoover said that when he, Hughes and Theis first began seeking sponsors for each of the 18 holes that make up the Massanutten Monster course in order to determine if they could raise the funds necessary for a redesign, they quickly got 12 or 13 sponsors on board and chose to “go with it.” Hughes said they received verbal commitments for one-third of the total donations received within the first week of seeking sponsors.

“Our sponsors have been super great in supporting this,” Hoover said on Friday, “and some of them even want to landscape their holes they sponsor.”

Hoover added that the concrete tee pads have yet to be paid for and estimated they had about $8,000 in donations left available to put toward that part of the project, though he was unsure on Friday exactly what the total cost to install those would be.

He noted that there are still other improvements to be made to the course as well — such as additional landscaping, the addition of some different features around some of the baskets and the installation of color-coded flags and signage to make navigating the different courses easier — and said people wishing to donate can do so on the parks and recreation page of the county’s website (shenandoahcountyva.us/parks) or by calling the parks and rec office.

Limestone Ledges, by incorporating the two shorter courses into the larger pro-level course that likely would seem a daunting challenge to the casual player, alleviates one of the biggest hassles of longer disc golf courses — maintenance — through its design, Hughes said.

“The long course nobody wants to play, and if nobody’s playing it, nobody’s beating it in, and if nobody’s beating it in then we have to maintain it more,” Hughes explained. “If this (larger pro-level) course is focused inside of a small course, then we can say hey, let’s focus on this small course and by focusing on this small course, we’ve taken care of nine holes of the big course, and let’s have each course appeal to somebody new.”

The redesign also cut down on the instances in which disc golfers need to throw over the walking path that meanders throughout the park, and angled some holes away from fencing that separates the park from neighboring property in an effort to cut down on the likelihood of errant discs sailing into adjoining farmland.

Another bonus of the design, Hoover added, is that Theis and Hughes were able to incorporate places in the park that previously had not typically been used.

“We cleaned up probably four or five spots that were never touched before in however many years we’ve had this park,” Hoover said.

Disc golf is exactly what it sounds like — an offshoot of traditional golf that uses specialized discs instead of golf clubs and balls, and baskets in lieu of holes — and continues to rise in popularity. Hughes said the sport has grown rapidly in the region over the last year as people have sought out new outdoor recreational activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hoover informed supervisors earlier this week that county park usage went up an estimated 40% in 2020 and called disc golf the facility’s biggest draw. Hoover said over 75 disc golfers played on the new course the first day it opened.

Limestone Ledges will host its first big tournament — the Maurertown FLY — next Saturday and Sunday, which sold out within 24 hours and will feature over 200 players, Hoover said.

“In some people’s eyes we may have overreached,” Hughes said of the redesign. “Once we get the flags and everything is marked, totally visible, I think this course is gonna be — I say ‘set aside from all the other courses,’ but realistically I think it’s setting a brand-new standard.”