THUNDER BAY - Students at École secondaire catholique de la Vérendrye are starting the year with a unique addition to the school ground.
La Vérendrye is the first school in the city with a complete nine-hole disc golf course.
The course is spread out throughout the school grounds and includes nine cages or baskets for the sport that combines golf and flying discs.
Eric Gauthier, a physical education teacher at La Vérendrye, said the school was looking at ways to improve the school yard and disc golf seemed to be the most popular suggestion among the students.
“We are seeing more and more kids starting to pick it up,” he said. “It appeals to all kinds of skill sets.”
Gauthier added that learning to play disc golf is fairly simple and any kid can pick it up and start to play.
“Sometimes we have kids that may not like competitive team sports, so they get to play and participate,” he said.
“I think it’s about participation, getting kids out, you don’t need a bunch of equipment. It’s not high impact sport compared to volleyball or basketball. It’s a pretty low maintenance kind of sport.”
Gauthier is also hoping that members of the community will take advantage of a second disc golf course in the city, the other being at Boulevard Lake.
Students, Josh Gauthier and Josh Brunet, said the course is a great addition to the school ground.
“It’s fun to see who can get the closest,” Brunet said.
“We went out as a family to Boulevard Lake to try to play it,” Josh Gauthier added.
“We’ve been playing for about a year now. I always kind of liked Frisbee, so seeing that there was a sport dedicated to Frisbee golf itself was really fun and now that we have one at the school it makes it a lot more fun.”
Gauthier said he is hoping other schools will consider adding their own courses so that disc golf may become the newest intramural sport to hit the city.
As a physical education teacher, Gauthier said that it is a great sport to get everyone involved in, and it does offer some important teachable skills, like patience.
“That was the lesson today, to be patient when you are starting to throw,” he said. “It may not be as easy as it looks. Once you get started and get the hang of it, you can get better and play within your skill set as well. It appeals to a wide mass of students.”
