›› Sports scare me. When a baseball hurtles toward me in a batting cage, I want to run. Then I think, “Why am I not wearing a helmet?” Maybe I feigned a fever the day they taught hand-eye-coordination skills in elementary school P.E. class. That was a thing, right?
Recently, a delightfully gregarious retired music teacher from Aurora Public Schools introduced me to disc golf, a sport. OK, it’s a fringe sport. But it’s fun because 1) There’s a lack of objects being hurled at your face, and little physical exertion is required. 2) Like golf, you can play it alone, and the risk of sustaining an injury from getting tackled, hit, checked or body-slammed is slim. 3) It’s a game that can be played in the winter, wearing jeans and Ugg boots, and in the summer while enjoying a clandestine wine cooler in a water bottle. (Shh.) 4) After purchasing the discs, it’s free.
Disc golf, as it turns out, is just my speed.
For the uninitiated, the game is a favorite among fraternity boys and hippies. You can think of it as a game of golf that uses flying discs (read: Frisbees) instead of balls, and metal baskets instead of holes.
Disc golf enthusiast John Neely, a 60-year-old master of the French horn, owns a slew of assorted flying discs. Before he and I set out to play at Expo Park’s 18-hole disc golf course, he unzipped a travel-bag-treasure-trove containing a dozen colorful plastic circles. They were captivating — lime greens, bright oranges and even tie-dyes — but Neely explained that there are more nuances to the oversized coaster-shaped item than meets the eye. The discs vary in thickness, weight and rigidity. Thinner ones are able to fly faster and at longer ranges, and discs that are thicker and more rounded at the edges, called putters, are best for close-range throws.
Wow. It’s a real sport.
Neely has been playing disc golf regularly for almost 10 years. He loves the fresh-air thrill of the game so much that he even plays during snowstorms and before dawn. Someday, he wants to play under the dim light of a full moon. He says that on several occasions, he’s lost some of his darling discs to the streams and ponds scattered around Expo Park. Since they cost between $10 and $20 each, he carries a metal gizmo in his fanny pack to fish out those that can be saved. Armed with the basics of the game, and downright terrified that one of his pricey discs will go flying into a nearby body of water on my first throw, we trek over to hole No. 1. Surprisingly — for both of us, now that Neely knows about my aversion to sports — when I throw a disc, it generally goes in the direction I aim for.
“You’re trainable,” he says, complimenting my form. I consider that a victory already, and attribute my good form to my history of balancing on ice in competitive figure skating.
Neely shows me how to throw the disc in a way that ends with a pirouette, arms spread out while balancing on one foot. Yes. I can do that.
It takes me between four and eight “strokes” to get the disc in each “hole.” Neely can make it in about two or four because his throws are full of power. His discs go flying so far that they eventually look like specks of dirt in the air.
Once, I let go of the disc too late and it landed directly opposite of the basket. My tutor didn’t make me feel bad. “Your form was good, and you threw it straight — you just threw it the wrong way,” he said.
But as we get closer to the baskets near the stream, I throw my discs with hesitation. Like a racehorse, I’m ready to sprint toward the disc if it looks like it’s rolling into the water. He laughs when I tell him that, both of us imagining what I would look like running at full-speed, trying to pounce on a flying disc before the frigid stream gulps it.
Fishing out a flying disc from icy waters? That’s a sport-related fear I can live with.