Last year, Colorado Mesa University put in a nine-basket disc golf course on their main campus. The course begins in front of the Mav Center and ends next to the volleyball pits behind Escalante Hall, with designated starting points for each basket marked with a spray painted Rowdy. Each basket also has handy signs available at each beginning spot, which denote the basket number and par. I frequently play this course with friends, and it usually takes around 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the time of day and business of campus.
Personally, I feel that this is an amazing beginner course because you have very little chance of losing a disc and the baskets are close enough together that you can’t mess up a shot too bad. The course is also very well maintained, which is a plus.
One of the highlights of this course is its accessibility to CMU students.
“It’s so convenient,” CMU student and “frolf” (frisbee golf) enthusiast Austin Walton said. “Whenever I want to play, I don’t have to plan my day to go play, I can just get the boys and go.”
The convenience of the course does not come without a price though. Some people who don’t play the course have some issues with it.
“Windows get hit all the time,” CMU student Mickenzie Bottom said. “Everyone playing is so loud during the times I’m trying to do homework.”
Timing is important when it comes to this course. In my experience, the best time to play the course is from 3 p.m. until sundown. After three, there are less people on campus (i.e. less obstacles). However, one can also go during scheduled class times when everyone is in class instead of walking around campus. Walton noted that the busyness of campus can sometimes be a hindrance; he confessed to once “doming” a passerby.
The course also has its limits when it comes to skill level. There are no long shots; one hardly uses their driver disc during play. There are also frequent play pauses to wait for students to get out of the way of your shot.
One other issue I have faced is that some people walking past don’t understand the game of disc golf and actually pick my disc off the ground and throw it back to me trying to be helpful. This isn’t a problem at more established disc golf courses.
“There [are] definitely better courses,” Walton said. “Downtown is a pretty solid course.”
One nice thing about the course downtown is that it is much bigger. It is an 18-basket course with very spread out targets. The scenery is also amazing; the course is on a peninsula in the Colorado River. However, the downside of that is that losing your disc in a river becomes a real possibility.
One complaint about the CMU disc golf course is that the baskets are very close together compared to the course downtown.
“I like [the CMU] course, but the way they have it set up is that it’s super safe,” Walton said.
He and his friends find this to be very unchallenging and find themselves using “alternate spots” to begin from to make the course more difficult and entertaining.
Overall, the CMU disc golf course is like oatmeal with nothing in it; it does what it needs to do and I’m grateful for it, but it gets bland and uneventful after a while.
