Volunteers are putting the finishing touches on White County’s new disc golf course.
The White County Recreational Complex course set to open this fall, two years since the project got approval from White County officials. Michael Hoffman from the Cookeville Disc Golf Club said the project has been quite the endeavor. He said all of the volunteers see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“As far as the time and work that goes into putting something like this in, it’s pretty much volunteer work,” Hoffman said. “Most of us have been playing for seven to fifteen years, so we’ve gotten to see a lot of different courses and kind of know what it takes to put in a good course. And that takes definitely a lot of time and man hours. And really we’re all just excited to have another place to play in our area.”
The course will be located in the woods behind the baseball fields at the complex. Hoffman said the course will be one of the most difficult in the area, which he expects to bring outsiders into White County.
“We’re hoping to have this course be able to allow us to host more events,” Hoffman said. “There’s towns in Tennessee, like Morristown, TN which is not in itself a real large town, but every year they host the Tennessee Disc Golf Championships and that brings a lot people in from several of the surrounding states. So, we’re just looking to have a nice difficult course to both push players to get better and encourage people from out of town or out of state to hopefully come and visit.”
White County paid for all of the supplies and equipment which Hoffman said was a blessing. But the design and installation of the Spartan Summit course has been up to the volunteers themselves. Hoffman said they spent months studying the land and creating an 18-hole layout.
“Once we had a rough plan, there was several months that went by kind of just waiting on permissions and all that through the county,” Hoffman said. “To get permission to go ahead and start cutting and actually putting the thing in. Probably been working on actually putting the course in, as far as cutting, building tee pads, digging holes and concrete, pins for baskets. That’s probably been about a year end process.”
Hoffman said the project could not have been possible without the help from fellow Cookeville Disc Golf Club members Alex Callis, Marshall McReynolds and Austin Holman.