Seward, AK is a small city that takes about 2-1/2 hours of scenic driving to get to from Anchorage. It is the gateway to the stunning Kenai Fjords National Park, home of the only aquarium in Alaska, and a port of call for cruise ships during non-COVID times. You may have also heard of Seward if you closely watched or followed the recent Tokyo Olympics. Lydia Jacoby, the 17-year-old swimmer who won the gold medal in the women's 100 m breaststroke, calls Seward home. Writing this approximately a month later, there are still signs congratulating and supporting Ms. Jacoby posted all over town. Well deserved!

A much less noteworthy fact about Seward is that it has a 9-hole disc golf course. The course is listed as "Seward Middle School" on here but it actually plays more around the high school, and according to a kiosk is actually called "Seward Community DGC". The kiosk has a nice color map of the course, as well as distances for all the holes.

Each hole has a yellow banded DISCatcher basket, two small concrete teepads, and one tee sign all in good shape (I did not find a cement pad for the long tee on hole 8, but it may have just been buried under some gravel). The tee signs are generally located somewhere around the longer (dark blue) tee. The signs show the hole number, par (always 3), and layout for both the longer dark blue and shorter light blue tee. There are also Next Tee signs on holes that need them.

From either tee, this course plays as a short, technical round. It runs through a mixed forest with old growth tree trunks, plus thicker younger trees and brush in some areas. The lines through these trees are generally fair but not too easy. A few holes turn left, a few turn right, and a few are straight. The terrain is not extreme here, but most holes play on a slight upward or downward incline. Other than a baseball field well behind hole 8's basket, it honestly doesn't feel like you are playing around school grounds at all.

Hole 7 has a nice view of the mountains across Resurrection Bay. A building in the foreground kind of dampens the visual appeal though.

There is a ton of walking between holes. I felt like I did more walking than disc golfing. It seems like it would be possible to reconfigure current holes 3, 8, and 9 to end up near the drive after playing five holes, then cross it only once to play the remaining four. As is, the distances between holes are so long that I was hoping for more Next Tee signs as reassurance that I am still heading in the correct direction (using the map helped me though).

The walk back to the parking lot from hole 9 is up the fairways of holes 2 and 3. If other people were playing those holes it could be a safety concern, particularly #2 where you are walking from basket towards tee.

The course is very short. Even from the "long" tees there are only two holes that eclipse 300'. From the shorter tees the longest hole is only 200'. Experienced disc golfers will probably only need a couple of discs here and get bored easily. It seems like there is more space available (see above), so mixing in a few longer holes would be nice.

Other than that just a few nitpicky things:
- The brush is a little thick in some spots. It could be cut down a little bit to prevent lost discs, without reducing the level of challenge.
- Hole 5 needs a Mando. The tee sign shows that from the dark blue tee you are supposed to throw about 75' forward, then kink sharply right for 100' to reach the basket. Any respectable disc golfer is going to throw it 125' across the convenient gap in the woods and get an easy birdie.
- On hole 6, the path shown from the dark blue tee is misleading and there is also a ton of brush right off the tee that should be cut down.
- No trash cans anywhere on the course.

It is kind of funky getting to this course. The pin location here correctly marks the location of the kiosk and hole 1 tee, but when I played on a Sunday evening there was a fence across the road where Sea Lion Ave meets the drive on the north side of the high school, and no parking lots on that side of the fence. You could either park on the side of the road before the fence, OR come in from the south (Resurrection Blvd to Sherman St), then turn left at the school drive and follow it clockwise around the school, where a lot next to the aforementioned fence can now be reached. Maybe on a school day that fence is open. But you probably shouldn't play during school hours anyways, though there is nothing on the kiosk that bans it.

The cell service is OK here, it seemed a little spotty for me but generally I had it.

With all the walking between holes, this is not necessarily a quick round. It took me about 45 mins to play solo. If you have a group I would plan on an hour or more just to play 9 holes.

Overall this is a decent course. I enjoyed it and would play it again if I make a return visit to the city and national park. I highly recommend doing one of the boat tours to see the park and marine life. If you only have a day in Seward, do NOT forsake the boat tour or Exit Glacier to play this course. But if you have a little more time in town, this course provides a decent and easy option to add a round of Alaska disc golf to your vacation. It isn't bad for introducing the sport to more locals either. The two sets of tees make it possible to get an 18 hole round in. With some of the Cons above addressed I would give this course a 2.5 for sure, or maybe even a 3.0.

Go Lydia Go!