The sound of Frisbee discs hitting chain baskets could be heard throughout the woods on Sunday morning at the 2012 Capital City Renegades Open.
The tournament consisted of three rounds, with two rounds at Burchfield Park, 881 Grovenburg Road, in Holt, Mich., and one at Grand Woods Park, 4500 River Ridge Road, in Lansing.
Erin Oakley, co-vice president of the Capital City Renegades Disc Golf Club, or CCR, said there were 138 players entered in the event, with 24 being professionals.
“There is $3,000 added into the professional purse on top of their entry fee, which is $100, so all that cash gets divided up to the top three of each division,” Oakley said, adding first place received $1,800.
Oakley said the courses at Burchfield Park are what the members of CCR are most proud of.
“Burchfield has a very complex disc golf area,” Oakley said. “It’s like a disc golf country club.”
Professional Disc Golf Association member and Phoenix, Ariz., native Paul Ulibarri won the tournament and said he loved playing the courses, especially Burchfield.
“I did OK,” Ulibarri said. “I played well one of the days. I drove the disc well, but missed a few putts.”
Ulibarri said he made more than $2,003 at the tournament and that his next stop is at a tournament in Massachusetts.
At one time, he was a professional pool player, but he chose disc golf for the love of the game.
Ulibarri’s fiancée, 2011 PDGA Female Rookie of the Year Catrina Allen, won the female portion of the tournament.
“It’s awesome to have her with me,” Ulibarri said. “She’s better than me when it comes to ranking on tour.”
The other co-vice president of CCR, Jeff Dutka, said he does a lot of the social media and advertising for CCR and that it took a while for him to get disc golf retailer Dynamic Discs to come sponsor the tournament.
“We talked to Dynamic Discs for two years trying to get them to come out,” Dutka said. “The goal is to have all the touring pros stop in Lansing before heading out east.”
When it comes to the future of the tournament, Dutka said CCR must walk a fine line between the old and new schools of thought.
“You have the local players who want to see the growth of the sport, but don’t want it to turn into a circus,” he said. “Then you have the younger breed who want all that attention and want the top pros to come out. You have to make concessions and try to make everybody happy.”
Dutka said students always are welcome to join CCR and play in the tournaments.
“At one point, there was a course by the pavilion,” he said, adding CCR helped to manage and build until it was removed due to complaints he did not know further details about.
Steven Storrie has sponsored Dynamic Discs for two years and opened the first franchise store for Dynamic Discs in his home state of Texas.
He said he carries all seven of the major manufacturers and that there are hundreds of different kinds of discs out there.
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“I want to spread disc golf in a positive way,” Storrie said.
If there is one thing that Oakley wants everyone interested in disc golf to know, it is that it is a sport for all ages.
“I run the women’s league out here, and my daughter, who is 8, plays in it,” she said. “I also have a 70-year-old woman.”
