Golf With a Disc

The Ferris club disc golf team defeated Western Michigan at home

The Ferris club disc golf team defeated Western Michigan 70–49 at the Michigan Intercollegiate Disc Golf Challenge (MIDGC) third event on Sunday. The event was held at Northend Riverside Park and included four stu­dents from Ferris. Disc golf is played sim­i­larly to con­ven­tional golf in that there are 18 holes and your score is the num­ber of strokes total. Typically, events are scored using stroke-play, which is sim­ply based on the total num­ber of shots a com­peti­tor takes and the low­est score wins.

This event, how­ever, was match-play and each hole was awarded a num­ber of points. Brad Way, a senior in the con­struc­tion man­age­ment pro­gram, said the win­ner of the hole received two points; each per­son was awarded one point if they tied and the loser did not receive any points. This event was unique in that play­ers of all skill lev­els could play because play­ers were hand­i­capped to their indi­vid­ual average.

Senior Josh Pickard, a his­tory major, picked up 32 points in the dou­bles round and 33 in the sin­gles round. He is now in fifth place over­all with 126 points overall.

Dr. Leonard Johnson has been coor­di­nat­ing the MIDGC series since the fall of 2006. It was at that time that the club disc golf team was cre­ated at Ferris. Once a month, stu­dents from col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties around Michigan com­pete against one another in orga­nized events.

“The sport has grown so much that there is a tour­na­ment some­where in the state every week­end,” said Johnson.

This was the third MIDGC event of the sea­son. Ferris won the first tour­na­ment over Western Michigan 62–48. It was held on the final week­end in September in Three Rivers. Pickard and Way rep­re­sented Ferris in the victory.

The sec­ond event took place on Oct. 10 at Oshtemo Township Park near Kalamazoo. Ferris defeated Western Michigan in the dou­bles match, but dropped both sin­gles matches and lost 97–88 overall.

Johnson said that stu­dents from Central Michigan, Michigan State, Lawrence Tech, Schoolcraft, Grand Valley State and Western Michigan have all com­peted in var­i­ous events. Way said this sea­son Western Michigan and Ferris have been the only two schools con­sis­tently com­pet­ing in the events.

It costs $10 for the match-play and an addi­tional $10 to be counted for stroke play. Any per­son can win cash pay­outs for the low­est score of the tour­na­ment, accord­ing to Way.

Last sea­son Ferris defeated Western Michigan to claim the 2008–2009 MIDGC Championship. With the vic­tory on Sunday, Ferris now leads 220–193 over­all. The sea­son began in September and runs through May, with one tour­na­ment each month.