Get Ft Washington DiscGolf BASKETS!
Hello, my name is Jamey Sims and I am a Disc Golfer.
(Hi Jamey!)
I live a couple of miles from a course that had such bad reviews I didn't bother playing it for almost 2½ years after I started throwing even though the next closest course to this area is more than half an hour away. Originally built in 2004 as an eagle scout project, the Fort Washington State Park Disc Golf Course has a wacky design with posts not baskets, teepads that might as well be made of marbles, walking path unfairways and the densest, most punishing rough around. It has basically sat there neglected and almost unplayed ever since it was put in.
Well... I think it's time to change that. There is a great course sitting there in the woods and I've been working my buns off for the past couple of months carving it out. I brought in a great course designer (Jerome Von Mechow (Designed Sellersville and helped on Nockamixon, Hacketts, Bootleggers Cave and probably several others)) and we fixed or replaced the problematic holes (3-8) and made improvements to the other 3. All of the wooded holes have had substantial underbrush cleared making them 3 to 5 times wider than they were. Quite a bit of distance has been added as well, two of the new holes are over 400'! (one wooded, one wide open)
It has taken almost 200 hours of mowing, chopping, cutting, loping, pruning and clearing to get to this point but the Fort Washington State Park Disc Golf Course is now ready to have baskets and real tee pads installed! The best quote I've gotten for 9 baskets so far was from Discraft for their Chainstar model, $2871 delivered. As soon as the money for the baskets is in, they will be ordered. After that, additional funds will be used for tee pads. Flymats are approximately $100 each (working on getting a better quote direct from the manufacturer in Lancaster) and another $60 per box for wood, stone and rebar.
Fort Washington sits in a perfect location, right in the middle of a large population center with the Pennsylvania Turnpike and 309 right nearby. It could provide some releif to the 3 closest courses (Sedgley Woods, Tyler State Park and Sellersville), all about 30 minutes away and all suffer from overcrowding at times. It's also in a beautiful park with lots of other activities, clean bathrooms and tons of wildlife.
Once the baskets go in I think there are going to be A LOT of thankful disc golfers. The new course has a fun design and will be accessible to players of all levels. A local high school just added Disc Golf as a gym class option, I think it would go a long way towards growing the sport if they had a real course to play on! As someone who lives close by, I love the fact that I can go to the course, throw a quick 9, and be back home in less time than it takes to get to any other course.
I can't thank you enough for reading this and especially if you've decided to donate your hard earned cash to this awesome project!
