The design is complete. The concrete is poured. The baskets are up.
Marshalltown now has a full disc golf course.
The new 18-hole course opened earlier this week, and disc golf enthusiasts couldn't be happier.
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T-R PHOTO BY DAVID ALEXANDER
Local disc golf enthusiast, Kimberly Newman, tosses a disc into the basket of the first hole of the recently finished disc golf course at Riverview Park Friday evening. The new 18-hole course opened earlier this week, and its board expects to have all the signs up and install minor additions some time in July. Sponsorship and grants funded a large majority of the construction.
"This will be exciting because we will have nine new holes to play," Kimberly Newman, local disc golfer, said. "It will be nice that we can stay in town and have our own 18."
Terry Gray, parks and recreation director, said not all the signs featuring the names of sponsors, the distance and par for each hold are up, but otherwise, the course is ready for play.
A variety of grants from the Community Foundation, Marshalltown Convention and Visitors Bureau and various in-kind and cash sponsors funded the roughly $12,000 project.
The course's expansion sees the area where the old nine holes used to be playing host to only three holes.
Those interviewed all said the course could act as an attraction for out-of-town disc golfers.
"It won't be unusual to have people strolling through town just to play our course," Gray said.
Local company Poured Foundations donated the labor to pour the pads, while Concrete Incorporated donated 10 of the 15 yards of concrete poured. Parks and recreation provided the remaining five yards.
Byron Sunkle, owner of Poured Foundations, said his four-man crew are all disc golfers. His company donated roughly $2,000 worth of labor. Home Rental provided a buggy to haul the concrete.
The course has been at Riverview Park since the 1980s, Gray said.
Aaron Steward, one of Sunkle's employees at Poured Foundations and disc golf board member, said the old course was a good starter course, but it was outdated.
He said the board is looking to host tournaments and maybe even create a disc golf league in the future.
Steward, 29, said it took him and a friend just shy of an hour and a half to play the whole course Friday.
"If you play it once, you will know where everything is," he said. "But it will take quite a while before you actually start lowering your score."
Ben Cooper, who did walkthroughs with the course designer, said he and the others who helped lay out the course wanted to make it challenging. A lack of elevation proved to be an issue, but he said designing the course so it would require users to throw different shots helped add variety.
The first and eighteenth holes have require disc golfers to throw over water but also feature shorter tee pads for those who do not want to risk losing their discs, Cooper, 27, said. For a future improvement, he said he would like to add alternate pins to hang baskets in other areas both to add variety and to help less-experienced players.
When designing the course, he said, they knew they wanted to use as much of the park as possible but didn't want people to have to walk a great distance to get back to the start. He said the solution was simple: they made the course a figure-eight pattern.
"We wanted to make if for the community because this is the only course here, and there are a huge amount of people playing it," he said. "It's a sport for life."
Sometime in July the course will likely see additions such as different tee spots. The board will likely hold a ribbon-cutting event sometime in August, Cooper said.
Suckle said while his crew poured the concrete several passersby stopped and expressed interest in the course.
"It will just be good family fun," Suckle said. "I think it's going to be one of the top (courses) around.