In late September 2024, Kyle Sims woke up to a second day of torrential rain, and the hurricane wasn't even there yet. He was in the western North Carolina town of Marion, a place in the last foothills before the Blue Ridge Mountain range begins in earnest and just a 40 minute drive along Interstate 40 from the bustling city of Asheville.
"The creek was already outside of its banks, and we were still 24 hours away from when this hurricane was supposed to hit," Sims recalled. "A neighbor had sent me an article about the great flood of 1916 where quite a few people had died with just 22 inches [559 millimeters] of rain, and he told us he had already recorded 15 inches [381 millimeters]."
The approaching hurricane had a name everyone in southeastern Appalachia would soon know and curse, Helene, and Sims smartly decided to get out of its path while he still could. In doing so, he reluctantly left behind 157 acres [64 hectares] of land where he'd cofounded his dream business just four years earlier, North Cove Leisure Club. The property boasted a bar, restuarant, tennis courts, glamping, and a concert venue along with its main attractions: three world class disc golf courses plus a nine-hole putting course.
When Helene did arrive, its heavy rains fell on sodden, unstable hillsides and added to already-overflowing creeks, rivers, and reservoirs. Devastation was inevitable. In a letter published by the Office of State Budget and Management in late October, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper asserted that the hurricane was the deadliest in the state's history and that damages were likely to exceed $53 billion.
North Cove hadn't been spared. When Sims saw the property 36 hours after he'd left it to escape the storm, he believed his dream had come to an end. The formerly idyllic landscape now looked like an unsalvageable wasteland of mud, debris (even cars), and the corpses of trees that had once stood picturesquely on faraway mountainsides. But as he, in tears, called friends and business partners to tell them that everything was over, a few of them suggested something that seemed impossible at the time: Maybe this was just a new beginning.
What North Cove Disc Golf Was
Sims had the idea that became North Cove Leisure Club as a graduate student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He had to write a buiness plan as an assignment, and, a lover of music and disc golf, he decided to make one for a joint concert venue and pay-to-play disc golf facility that would include a bar and restaurant to attract visitors.
After graduating, Sims founded a few enterprises, and one of them took off, giving him the financial means to think about his former fantasy business in very real terms. He even had a property in mind: A golf course he'd seen many times at the halfway point of his frequent, scenic drives between Boone and Asheville.
"It was stupidly or smartly the one and only place that I looked at," Sims said. "When I decided I was going to do this, I went to the property, and the guy was like, 'Please buy this off of me.' It was kind of a failing golf course at the time."
Things moved quickly after that. When Sims closed the deal on the land, he had to rush to get courses in the ground because he'd already agreed to host the Collegiate National Championships that were just five weeks away. Innova's Andrew Duvall – son of Harold Duvall who cofounded the disc golf equipment giant – designed the courses largely along the pre-existing golf fairways.
Despite the hurried design and install process, the courses were gems. In 2024, two of North Cove's three 18-hole courses, Boulders and River Run, made the top 100 of the World's Best Disc Golf Courses, making it one of just four multi-course facilities on the planet to boast multiple tracks in the world's top 100. The club also hosted the Collegiate Championships from 2020-2023 and a Disc Golf Pro Tour event in 2023 that brought many of the sport's top players to North Cove's fairways.
Here's what Justin Renfro, who is both a charity fundraising expert who encouraged Sims to rebuild North Cove and a disc golfer who's played hundreds of disc golf courses across the world, had to say about his experience at the Marion facility.
"Everywhere you look, it's picturesque," Renfro said. "All three courses had their own unique flavor– playing across creeks, you had the water features, wide open paths that you were riding with a golf cart, which is very rare in disc golf. And just having the Blue Ridge...you're just completely consumed by this mountain."
Building North Cove Back Better
After the initial shock of seeing the work of four years destroyed in just a few days, Sims started to feel some of the hope that friends and many in his community were encouraging him to have. His goal for the property had always been to make it the world's premier disc golf destination, what he termed the "Augusta National of disc golf," referring to the hallowed traditional golf course that hosts The Masters tournament. It could be that being forced to reimagine North Cove's courses will bring that objective closer than ever.
"One of the exciting things to think about is this blank slate and the position we're in right now," Sims said. "We have a chance to take a break and rethink the whole property."
But getting the facility back up to par won't be easy – or inexpensive. Just this week, an IndieGoGo campaign launched with the goal of raising $200,000 to help pay for the work needed to reopen North Cove by the spring of 2025.
"It's not lost on me that I'm asking people to help me build a disc golf course back when there's people who've lost far, far more than I have – people who have died," Sims said. "But I've heard that this location means a lot to the disc golf community and it definitely means a lot to my local community. People love having us here. I love sharing this part of Appalachia with people."
The campaign isn't asking for money while offering nothing but a rebuilt pay-to-play course in return, however. Those who donate can receive exclusive access to the course when it reopens, huge discounts on club memberships, and more.
To learn more about the situation at North Cove, see a video that shows the state of the courses shortly after the storm, and have the option to help the facility rebuild, visit "Save North Cove DGC in the Aftermath of Helene" on IndieGoGo.
