BY MADDIE JOINER
FOR THE OPELIKA OBSERVER
Disc golf is growing in the Auburn-Opelika area and now is the perfect time to get involved. The inaugural Alabama Junior Disc Golf Championship will take place in Opelika at the SportsPLEX on Saturday, July 24. The event is free and open to the public. The first age division will start at 8:30 a.m.
Anyone under the age of 18 can register, regardless of disc golf skill level.
The event is Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) sanctioned and entry is just $15. With that fee, athletes will get a t-shirt, a disc and towel. Tournament director Brad Moseley anticipates registration to cap at 70 people due to course limitations.
Due to interest in the sport in the area, Moseley wanted to host the inaugural event to get more athletes under the age of 18 interested.
“It’s a good outdoor activity for the kids and we’re just trying to enhance the visibility of it and give them a competitive outlet,” Moseley said.
Before now, kids in the area were traveling out of state to compete and Moseley wanted to find a way for them to compete locally.
“There was a niche in Alabama that needed to be filled,” he said. “We had a lot of juniors in Alabama traveling to Georgia, Florida or South Carolina to go play junior tournaments and there weren’t a lot of junior tournaments being hosted, so we decided to do it ourselves, basically.”
During the event, participants will be split up by age and there will be shorter tees for younger age divisions and standard tees for older age divisions.
The 12 and under divisions will play one round in the morning. The tournament will break for lunch around 11 a.m. and this is when the 12-and-below division awards will be given out.
The older divisions will play one round in the morning and one in the afternoon. Awards will begin following the final hole.
If anyone is interested in participating but has little to no knowledge of the sport, Moseley urges them to reach out and ask questions.
“If someone has a kid that is interested in the sport, I promise you that the disc golf community in the area can get some discs in their hands,” Moseley said. “Somebody would probably be happy to go out there and you know, kind of show them, show them the course, give them some tips and pointers and things like that like. We’re trying to grow the sport; we’re trying to get more people playing.”
While Opelika currently only has one disc golf course, Moseley mentioned the possibility of adding more in the area due to the growing interest in the sport.
The Opelika Auburn Disc Golf Club hosts multiple events throughout the year, which cater to a wider age range, but Moseley wanted to focus on getting a younger crowd involved for this specific event.
For more information on the event or if anyone is looking to learn more about the sport before the tournament, email opelikaauburndiscgolf@gmail.com. To register for the tournament visit: www.discgolfscene.com/ajdgc2021.