akguanja
Par Member
So I've been playing disc golf for the past 6 years here locally and in my town (Wasilla, Alaska) we only have 1 course it currently has 9 holes but for years people have been talking about getting 9 more making it a full 18 hole course.
When I started playing it was 1/2 way decent but over the years of use and misuse and abuse by locals(mostly the young kids) the place had gotten run down and was starting to dwindle as far as life expectancy was going.
The Borough had even threatened to yank the course out!
So I sat out this summer to make this course try and be everything it could be...
First off I started by trying to get locals to help cleanup the course by contacting the state via emails/phone calls to get the pickup of trash expanded to once a week instead of bi-weekly. After months of complaining/submitting pictures I finally managed to get that to happen. Between the borough and the local players helping this changed things significantly in the appeal of the course it was starting to look a lot cleaner and I know people appreciate and are more willing to play on a clean course.
Next on the agenda was the baskets..... over the years of use/abuse the baskets had taken a beating the winter freeze/heaving of the ground and again abusive kids caused most (7 of 9) baskets to come up out of the ground and the past few years had only been held in place/standing by small branches/trees/rocks people would shove in around the concrete bases that were almost completely out of the ground and sometimes even falling over.
So I tackled this by re burying all the baskets and straitening them/repairing them as needed.
A couple years back a local boyscout decided to get some community backing and got funding for signs/wooden Tee boxes for the course and he installed those but when they were installed things didn't get burred very good so over the past couple years the signs had eventually all got knocked over/vandalized/drug way out in the woods by unappreciative kids and hooligans.
To combat this I found/repaired/replaced the signs and reburied them all (3 feet deep on the posts this time) and cleaned up the graffiti. The tee boxes or whats left of them still have a lot to be desired but things were starting to look pretty nice at this point with a clean course strait/buried baskets/and signs all in there correct places.
Next me and a few locals cleared the dead fall and dangerous leaning trees/stumps out of the fairways and greens on all 9 holes. At this point everything was looking really nice and there were a lot more people showing up to play and interest was defiantly on the rise....
I started a Facebook page for the course and am currently trying to bring the different groups of players together in one place where they can communicate with each other. This will help with holding events etc and with digital media the vandals or anyone cant simply tear a flyer/information down from the signs at the course.
http://www.facebook.com/AlcantraDGC Check it out and like it!
So now with all the added traffic and people playing at the course i started to notice long waits on holes because of the amount of players on the course at any given time so me and a friend took some information off here and built some benches for the holes and a place for locals to rest and wait on the hole to be clear.
So as you can see things are looking up around here but this is where YOU come into play....
I know there are a lot of you that have had experience with these things so tell me how can I get some sponsors/donations for the course possibly to expand the course to the full 18 holes it was originally intended to have when built years ago...
I have managed to so far get a local company to donate time/machine time to make 'bag tags' for the course and 100% of the profits would go to the baskets but from research ive done the baskets and shipping alone would be close to 4000$ Anyone know of better deals(remember shipping to Alaska!)
Does Innova or Discraft help with this kind of thing? are they or are other companies willing to sponsor courses some of you must know the emails/phone numbers i need to be calling to get help with this course!
If you have any information/possible contacts to help us make this course ALL that it can be please post up and help us Alaskans get our course up to PAR!