Making it safe for everybody in a multi-use park.

A course has been laid out by an eagle scout as a project in a city park in where I live. The park is a multi-use facility ie. basketball courts, tennis courts, playgrounds, and walking trails. The intial layout has been marked and staked. I played it yesterday afternoon. In the present layout, the fairways cross the walking trails on many of the holes, making it a danger to walkers and joggers using the trails.

I would love for the course to be installed; however, I don't think the proposed course is safe for others who use the park. Our discs are not backyard toys, they are more like weapons and an errant throw can inflict serious harm. It looks like safety was overlooked in the design of this course. The city has posted a contact number for the parks and recreation department coordinator asking for suggestions and concerns. Should I voice my concerns? Or should I sit back and let them go through with the installation?

My gut feeling is to voice my concerns. I love the sport and want to see new courses. But I don't feel that injuring pedestrians represents our sport. I am looking for a tactful approach to address this issues without the city scrapping the whole project.

If I do nothing ie. let the present design be installed. There is the chance that the city will recieve complaints and pull the course. A blackeye for the sport.

Just looking for opinions and advice.

Thanks.

[jasonc]

I would have to say go ahead and contact the city and voice your concerns. If not the course will go in, people will get irritated by all the stuff flying by their heads or worse yet get injured, then the complaints will start rolling in. I just think this would leave the city with a sour taste in their mouths when it came to disc golf. If they start out that way it will severly hamper chances at other courses in the area.

My 2 cents

[idahojon]

Better to have a redesigned, safe course than a pulled course.

[Jake L]

Contact P&R and tell them your honest concerns, "...an ounce of prevention........"

If you have the time, offer to help rework the layout. Remember that 9 quality holes with 2 tees can be a great course!

[ross]

Definitely voice your concerns now along with specific improvements to make it safer and more challenging. Some basic rules of thumb are:

-- back up to hazards and throw away from them
-- if you have to cross a path do so near the tee area with full visibility (rather than crossing at the end of the flight)
-- plan for the worst shots imaginable -- to find out what those can be take some newer players who have power but no control. Following them for a few rounds on the proposed layout will help you see where problems may arise.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

Ross

[Moderator005]

There is a course that I recently played that is simply the most dangerous layout I have ever come across in almost a decade in the sport. The first five holes play blindly down walking paths! From the tee pad, the thrower has no idea whether there are pedestrians, joggers, bikers, etc. up near the target. It appears to me that this course was installed without contacting a single disc golfer or consulting anyone about a design. Any experienced disc golfer would have immediately recognized the hazards of the current layout and would never have agreed to it.

I am in the process of writing an e-mail to the Parks Director and City Council member who sponsored the course to urge them to redesign the course. While I fear that this letter may result in the removal of the course, if an alternate design cannot be devised and the course moved to a safer section of the park, the right course of action is to remove the targets immediately.

It might seem sad to have a course removed, but Jeff is right. Safety first. The closest course to me is just about worthless because you throw at least three drives directly at a childrens playground. The stress that such a layout causes totally negates the pleasure of playing, and when inexperienced or non-caring idiots play the course and endanger little kids, it scares and embarasses me.
I will have to write the same letter Jeff did. I hate to lose the course, because the next closest one is over 70 miles away, but it is unplayable how it is and has a negative impact on people unaware of our sport.
my two pennies.

[stevenpwest]

Also contact the Scout who is trying to become Eagle.

Describing safety hazards is one part of the project planning. He might not get his Eagle if he failed to consider safety in his plan for the project. He should have consulted someone who knows disc golf design if he doesn't have the expertise himself.

In general, it is better for the Scout to direct others rather than do the work himself. So, if you offered to redesign the course (or find a designer) you would be helping the scout have a better project.

This will also give him something impressive to put into the section that explains why his plans had to change.

It would be sad to see the Scout do all that work, only to have the course be pulled out later. That would leave a bad taste in his mouth, even if he does earn Eagle.

An update:
This afternoon, I spoke with the project coordinator at Longview Parks and Rec Department and voiced my concerns regarding safety of the proposed course. He let me know that he appreciated my concerns, but assured me that safety had been addressed in the course design. I asked him what the city would do when pedistrians were hit by discs, his response was "that's a great way to introduce them to the sport." I offered my help with redesigning the course, and he reluctantly took my name and number, saying he would pass it along to the scout doing the course. So much for the parks department.

I plan on calling and sending letters to the city council members calling their attention to my concerns.

"That's a great way to introduce them to the sport"?

He obviously hasn't seen what a disc looks or feels like when it's thrown and hits something. Getting hit by a normal throwing/ultimate disc hurts bad enough but getting hit by a disc golf disc would just be plain painful and possibly quite injurous. I doubt the suggestion would be taken up, but you should offer to have this guy follow you around for a round ( especially if you hit trees as much as I do...). After he sees how fast a drive is, or how loud the crack is when you pop a tree solidly, maybe he'll realize that you don't "introduce someone to the sport" by putting them in the hospital...

lol. Hey head, meet disc......golf!
ouch!

[Moderator005]

Print out this article (http://www.collegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/15/407e252fc557b) and show it to him. A pedestrian on a disc golf course in Colorado got 16 stitches after being hit my a disc. Maybe that will open his mind.

[Blarg]

Geez, take him to a course! That guy sounds like an idiot.
Show him the notches made by discs in big tree trunks.
If you can't get him to a course, show him some drivers and if that doesn't work, slam some around in his office!
Maybe when he sees the holes in his walls he'll get the idea.
In any case, it'll be a 'great way to introduce him to disc golf!'
:D