A 12-hole disc golf course at Lackawanna County\u2019s McDade Park in Scranton should be ready for play this spring, county Parks and Recreation Director Paul Bechtel said.<\/p>\n
Officials announced plans in April for a heritage-themed disc golf course at the county-owned park, prompting excitement among local disc golfers and aficionados of the niche sport that exploded in popularity during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Unlike traditional golf played with clubs and balls, where the goal is to sink the ball into a hole in as few strokes as possible, disc golfers aim for elevated metal baskets with a goal of landing a disc in each basket in as few throws as possible. The player with the lowest score wins, just as in traditional golf.<\/p>\n
In announcing the project last year, county officials touted the course as an all-ages amenity that would bolster an already robust offering of outdoor recreational opportunities in the county and region.<\/p>\n
Commissioners Bill Gaughan and Chris Chermak voted in April to enter into a cooperative agreement with and accept $4,310 in grant funding awarded by the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority for the disc golf project, with that funding complementing a $5,000 Pocono Forests and Waters Conservation Landscape Mini Grant and LibertyStone Hardscaping Systems of Archbald\u2019s donation of pavers to construct the course\u2019s tee boxes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have five of the baskets \u2026 up right now,\u201d Bechtel said Friday. \u201cAlmost all the tee boxes are done. I would say it\u2019s probably 80% finished. All the signage is done. It just has to be installed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The signs reflect the heritage theme, with the names of the course\u2019s individual holes paying homage to elements of the region\u2019s past. The \u201cSilky Fairway\u201d hole, for example, references the silk and lace industries that were major economic drivers in Scranton and the county. Another hole named \u201cPhoebe\u2019s Flight\u201d is an homage to Phoebe Snow, the fictional socialite that advertising executive Earnest Elmo Calkins created to promote the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.<\/p>\n
Along with a map of the hole, each sign includes a \u201cheritage fact\u201d section explaining the relevant history.<\/p>\n
Bechtel also noted Friday that a disc golf club called the Steamtown Crushers Disc Golf Association will host leagues and other events at McDade and assist with overall maintenance of the course. Club founder Craig Lewis, a longtime disc golfer who moved to Scranton from Texas in 2023 after founding a large and popular club there, worked with Bechtel as a volunteer to design the course.<\/p>\n
Bechtel and Lewis worked together to make sure the course wouldn\u2019t infringe on the park\u2019s other uses. County officials mindful of the potential risk posed by flying discs stressed last year that the course would be situated in a manner that mitigates that risk to other park patrons.<\/p>\n
The county will hold a ribbon cutting at the new course in the spring, likely in early to mid May, Bechtel said.<\/p>\n
Monday Update<\/p>\n
Then: Lackawanna County announced plans last spring for a McDade Park disc golf course.<\/p>\n
Now: The course is on track to open for play this spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 12-hole disc golf course at Lackawanna County\u2019s McDade Park in Scranton should be ready for play this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-97411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}