Frisbee Golf
Probably my favorite sport to play is Ultimate Frisbee, a game very similar to rugby or American football where the object of the game is to pass a frisbee disc to your teammates 
from one end of the field down into the opposing end zone. Although there are many leagues where teams practice vigorously to compete, I prefer the more relaxed play of a “pickup” game where anyone can just show up and play for fun.
In the town of Española where I lived for the last 4.5 years, we played a pickup game every Sunday afternoon all year round. The game gets really fun when you have 6-8 people on each team, and on average about 10-15 people would show up to play, but sometimes we would have over 20! Ultimate became a regular activity in my life because it’s so much fun to play, and it challenges you to become skillful at throwing, catching, and coordinated play with your teammates. And you can do lots of running so it’s a great form of exercise.
Ultimate is definitely a love of my life for many reasons! So I’ve been kind of bummed in the last couple months because most cities that I have visited on this trip haven’t had any nearby pickup games. Enter the manifesting power of the universe — “ask and you shall receive”!
When visiting REI a couple weeks ago, I saw some Frisbee Golf discs for sale and I thought “what the hell, that looks like fun” and I grabbed a couple. After being cooped up inside doing too much work this week, I needed to get outdoors and get some exercise. That’s when I remembered the discs that were just sitting in my car. So I went online looked up Frisbee Golf courses in the area and I found one nearby and went to try it out.
Frisbee Golf is pretty similar to the game of Golf where you have tee-off areas, a big fairway (a long, narrow grass field), and a target at the end to get your frisbee into. But instead of clubs and a ball, you’re playing with frisbee discs which are smaller in size than a normal Ultimate/beach frisbee. The discs generally come in three types, a driver, a mid-range and a putter, and you can often buy them in a starter kit for the low price of $25-30. Each type of disc has a slightly different shape that can give you more distance or more control in your throws. The goal of the game is to continually chuck your frisbee down the fairway and eventually throw it into the basket to score. Scoring is generally done by keeping track of the number of throws for each hole and totaling all the throws at the end — the fewer throws the better. Well-built courses will have signs that tell you the “par” (average throws) for each hole. Most courses generally have 9 holes, though some of the nicer courses have up to 18.
Although the game certainly offers opportunity for competitive play by keeping track of your score or tournament competitions, many people just play for fun or to hang out with friends. Don’t worry if you don’t have anyone to play with… most times you can just show up at a course and either play by yourself or join up with other people who are already there.
I went out to play for a couple hours yesterday, and joined up with a few people of varying levels of experience who showed me the ropes and gave me some pointers. Because the goal of the game is to get the frisbee into the basket in as few throws as possible, it’s generally a good idea to chuck the disc as far as possible on each throw. Because my arm was out of practice for not having played Ultimate for a few months, the 2 hours of play yesterday left the muscles in my shoulder a bit sore. Still, I loved it so much that I had to play again today and so I went out for half an hour at lunch time. Ultimate Frisbee will always be a love of mine, but I now have a new best friend in my life, Frisbee Golf!
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