After well over a year of work and some rather heated debates among residents, the Guilford Disc Gold Course at Bittner Park is almost complete. As volunteers get to work on some of the final course components, officials say the hope is to see the whole course formally opened to the public within a month.

The disc golf course at Bittner Park—the first course of its kind in Guilford—has been under construction over the last few months following formal approval of the course in fall 2018. The course is 18 holes and was approved by both the Planning & Zoning and Inland Wetlands commissions.

Disc golf is a game that combines Frisbee and golf. A golfer is given a disc and has a certain number of throws to reach the “hole,” which is a stand with a chain basket sitting on top. The course will require little maintenance, which will be conducted by volunteers.

To construct the course, no large trees were taken down, but some brush and dead or narrow trees were removed to make way for the course. No heavy equipment like a bulldozer was used. Parks & Recreation Director Rick Maynard has said this is not an invasive project for the environment, but that volunteers were keeping an eye out to make sure no local wildlife was harmed as the course comes together.

Maynard said volunteers—especially eagle scouts—deserve most of the credit for building the course.

“We have five ongoing eagle scout projects up there right now,” he said. “One of the kids is putting in all of the baskets and I was up there on Saturday and they had nine baskets in. He was hoping to have the rest of them in hopefully by the end of this weekend. And the baskets are the key—you can’t play without the baskets.”

According to Maynard, the eagle scouts doing projects at the disc golf course are Cavan Lepro (Troop 471), who is installing the 18 disc golf baskets; John Aslanian (Troop 471), who is installing the back nine tee pads; Stephen Kegel (Troop 474), who is installing front nine tee pads; Michael Neiss (Troop 471), who is building a bridge over a stream; and Carson Tosta (Troop 474), who installed cedar posts for fairway signs and sponsor signs.

“All of these eagle scout projects are really making this all come together now,” Maynard said. “The course should likely be done in about a month so sometime in late August. This is being done by volunteers and they are doing a great job, so I am just so thankful for what they are doing for us...I just don’t know where we would be without some of the scouts. So much credit goes to them.”

In May, close to 50 people came out to try part of the course. Maynard said people are welcome to come up and play now on the roughly nine holes of the course that have already been completed. He said thus far feedback on the course itself has been very positive.

“When I was up there Saturday, there was a guy...from California and he played the whole course,” he said. “He started playing about 20 years ago and I asked him what he thought of the course and he said this is going to be an awesome course, so we are getting good feedback from people.”