By Don Kleppee
The tournament will be held officially Friday and Saturday October 6 and 7. Saturday will find participants at the Rotary Park Disc Golf Course. The course was installed in 1996 by 1986 World Open Disc Golf Champion Johnny Sias and yours truly with the financial help of Huntington businesses and civic organizations.
Sunday, October 7, weather permitting, the Professional and Advance Amateur players will move on to the new course recently installed at Camp Mad Anthony Wayne on Spring Valley Drive.
The new course is still pretty rough and is not "beginner friendly" or very forgiving. It is very steep in places and cuts up the hillside through the forest. If it rains, play will likely stay at Rotary Park because the hillsides and tee areas at Camp Wayne could become pretty treacherous. The field is expected to fill at 72 entrants. Pros pay $57 to play and Ams pay $32. The popular tournament has filled the past two years and pre-registration is required. Each entrant gets a player package of stuff and, thanks to folks like PowerAde, Calamity Cafe and Stewarts Original
Hotdogs, they will also be provided food and beverages on Saturday. Huntington's own Soupy Sales became involved during the initial building of the course. He was visiting town celebrating the 125th Anniversary of the
founding of Huntington and I had the pleasure of tooling him around town. While chatting, the Rotary project came up and he asked what he could do. I suggested donating a hole. He did.
He asked "What else?" and I told him about my plans for Huntington to host a Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) sanctioned event. He asked me what it took and I told him $$. He asked me what $1,000 would do and I told him that if he gave me $1,000 I'd name the tournament after him. And there you are. We're going into the 5th year and the quaility and quantity continues to build.
I would be remiss if I did not thank the folks helping to keep this growing. Like: Soupy, Jim Markey with Coca-Cola/PowerAde, the guys at Huntington Disc Golf, Rich Mitchell and the HuntingtonWorks! Committee, Sam St. Clair at Huntington Realty Corp., Mike Kirtner at Kindred Communications, Harold Duvall at Innova-Champion Discs, David Haught at Corporate Graphics, Roy and Terri at Calamity Cafe, John Mandt, Jr. at Stewarts, Johnny & Adele Sias, Dale at Lavalette Auto Repair, Glen Maynard, Charlie McLaurin at BFI, Basketcase - Insane for the Chains Disc Golf Wear, GottaGoGottaThrow, Disc 'N Dat, Disc Pimp, Stir Fried Productions, and my wonderful wife "Boo" who gives me all the time I need to pull this thing off.
You wanna know what disc golf is like? I invite you up to Rotary Park on October 6 to see some good, and some not-so-good, play. Interested in more information? E me at DonBooTy@aol.com.
