Marquette County has the largest area and population of any county in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.). But in the oughts and early 2010s, its disc golf scene was miniscule.
"I only knew of about 20 people that played here locally," recalled Bud DePetro, who started playing disc golf in the U.P. in 2010 and is the current Vice President of the Upper Peninsula Disc Golf Association (UPDGA) that's based in Marquette County.
Nowadays, there are hundreds of regular disc golfers and many more who enjoy the game occasionally on one of the area's seven courses with 18 or more holes, all of which were built after 2012.
What turned Marquette County from a disc golf backwater to a disc golf hotspot that entices locals and curious visitors alike to enjoy the healthy, low-impact game? According to DePetro and UPDGA President Tim Kopacz, it's a mix of hard work, purposeful course design, and utilizing stats that show investing in disc golf is paying dividends in terms of community engagement and tourism.
The First Step In Marquette County's Big Disc Golf Leap
Soon after Tim Kopacz started a job with the Marquette Board of Light and Power in April 2012, he was focused not only on keeping electricity flowing to the area's homes and businesses but putting energy into its disc golf scene, too.
Kopacz is an avid disc golfer and disc golf course designer who'd assisted and led various course installation efforts around Green Bay, Wisconsin, before moving to Michigan. When he first arrived in Marquette County, he didn't find the disc golf offerings to be inviting or safe.
"There were two defunct, nine-hole courses," Kopacz recalled. "They had crossing fairways. One of the parks had a hole that crossed three other fairways. One played through a playground area at a church."
But he had learned that the small band of local disc golfers were trying to start a new project in a park on municipal land. Since he worked for the municipality, it was easier for Kopacz to get the idea into the ears of the right people. Additionally, his previous experience with course installation efforts helped him anticipate questions and concerns decision-makers would have in terms of things like safety, length of construction, and space requirements.
As for any worries officials might have over expenses, Kopacz's plan was to do everything at zero cost to the municipality. Disc golfers would both search for private donors and partner with local businesses that would pay for a hole's construction in exchange for advertising on tee signs. The players would also take care of all course building.
With a clear proposal explaining the whys and hows of creating a new disc golf course at hand, U.P. disc golfers won approval to build Powder Mill disc golf course. They began approaching likely sponsors to get the funding they needed to start construction.
"We tied the demographics of who was playing disc golf and what types of businesses they would go to – local sporting goods stores, bars, restaurants, EZ Stops, some of the places like that," Kopacz said.
When a partner signed on, they'd build their hole. The more holes they had, the more they could show other potential donors how the game worked and get them excited about supporting it. Sometimes as they built, curious onlookers would ask what they were working on and end up donating to the cause.
"When they could start to envision it and saw it acually taking shape, more people would say, 'Oh, I'll be a sponsor – what's it take to do that?'" Kopacz recalled.
It took about nine months for Powder Mill to go from initial proposal to fully-funded, fully-built reality. And once the first course was in the ground, Marquette's disc golfers were excited to use Kopacz's successful formula to expand Marquette's disc golf offerings even further.
That got easier in 2013 when a person running a 501(c)(3) non-profit with a bylaw allowing it to run as any sort of organization with a charitable cause granted it to Marquette disc golfers, marking the start of the group that's today the UPDGA. With the 501(c)(3) designation, donors could now more easily write off donations supporting UPDGA projects from their taxes. That includes when people donate via a QR code link the group has started putting on its courses' baskets.
The designation has also helped the UPDGA attain grants from private and governmental sources.
Making Disc Golf Courses Inclusive & Beautiful
One of Kopacz's design ethics is for his courses to offer layouts for anyone interested in trying disc golf. His course plans often include multiple tee and basket locations for all holes, which he utilizes to create layouts people at various skill levels can enjoy. For example, Powder Mill has layouts rated as "easy" and "very short," "moderate" and "mid-length," and "challenging" and "long" by our course difficulty rating system here at UDisc.
Though multiple baskets and tees make courses more expensive to build, the payoff in accessibility is worth it to Kopacz.
"When we develop courses in the local neighborhoods where kids can walk to it or ride their bikes to it, we want them to not get discouraged by playing a 500-foot [152-meter] wooded hole," Kopacz said. "We give them a 150-foot [46-meter], not-so-difficult hole to get them hooked on the game and the excitement of throwing a disc through woods and hearing the chains crash and getting aces."
One of the UPDGA's favorite success stories revolves around a group of teenagers who started riding their bikes to local courses nearly everyday to play. One of them, Kennan Johnson, quickly became so good that he attended the 2019 Amateur Disc Golf World Championships and placed fourth overall in the tournament's highest division, which had 278 competitors and included adults.
It's an extreme case, but Johnson's story demonstrates the benefits of the multiple-layout strategy. Shorter, accessible layouts get people excited about the game, and the more difficult layouts let them push themselves to whatever level suits their ambitions.
"We emphasize that disc golf is relatively cheap to start playing and that anyone from toddlers to senior citizens can play," UPDGA V.P. DePetro said.
Along with mass apeal in terms of difficulty, Kopacz uses natural beauty to make courses attractive.
"We strive to utilize the artistic nature of the course – rock outcroppings or big, majestic trees," said Kopacz. "Step onto a tee pad, and it's like a picture frame."
The mixture of picturesque holes and layout options for all skill levels has made it common to encounter disc golf tourists around Marquette County.
"Many times I’m out mowing or cutting and having people stop and say thank you and finding out they traveled a good distance just to play what we created," DePetro said.
Using Local Disc Golf Stats to Show the Game's Value
Prior to COVID-19 driving up the demand for outdoor recreation options, every UPDGA project started with the group identifying a promising piece of property and then beseeching local officials to let them build a course on it. Once the pandemic hit, the tables turned, and the UPDGA was getting calls from decision-makers and landowners desperate to offer citizens a safe form of recreation.
Of course, anything done on public property still required approval, so though the UPDGA went into meetings with even more goodwill toward them than usual, they still needed to present a compelling argument for disc golf. November 2022 marked the first time the group utilized stats gathered from rounds recorded with UDisc to make their case.
"We sold that course as wanting to reduce traffic on our most popular course as well as build something bigger and better than we'd done with limited resources in the past," said Kopacz.
Powder Mill was the most popular course. The UPDGA presented UDisc play counts of around 2,200 so far that year plus their personal experience that roughly 20% of local players used the app to record rounds to show officials how well-used the facility was. The stats did their job and helped the new course proposal get approved. Ever since, UPDGA pitches always include UDisc stats, which cover much more than play counts.
"Township boards and city boards are comprised of a lot of different people with a lot of different backgrounds," Kopacz said. "There are some that are really active, and they'd key in on the steps taken. Others cared about the tourism aspect of trying to develop a disc golf destination in the county, and they were interested in seeing how many states and countries people have traveled from to come play."
Having stats showing the varied community benefits of disc golf along with multiple successful courses and a track record of strong fundraising have turned the UPDGA's work growing disc golf in Marquette County from an uphill battle into them trying to keep up with demand.
"The popularity, traffic on the courses, and stats speak for themselves and now we get asked to please build courses on nearby properties!" said Kopacz.
