Disc Golf as a way to help potentially troubled youth?

[ReedyCreekProduct]

Anybody have any experience with Disc Golf helping to keep a kid out of trouble?

Anybody know of any programs or tourneys geared towards this aim?

[Three Putt]

Ozanam is a residential treatment facility for kids with emotional and behavioral problems in Kansas City. One of the big contributors to Ozanam, Bill Stueck, owns a big garden and landscaping retail company and he installed a disc golf course on some land he owns. The course is known as Thornfield, it's down by Olathe someplace. From what I can tell they hold fund raising tournaments out there for not for profit agencies. I'm not sure if they hold disc golf events out there for the kids those agencies serve or not. Ozanam is loosely affiliated with several other treatment facilities in Kansas City, so if they do have a disc golf program at Thornfield for those kids it would have the potential to serve a lot of kids.

Like I said, I'm not sure they are doing anything other than holding fund raising events there. From what I understand, the Stuecks are not even disc golfers. Basically I have no idea how this course came to be or how it is used, I just know it is there (and I can't play it!)

[Jukeshoe]

Originally Posted by ReedyCreekProduct

Anybody have any experience with Disc Golf helping to keep a kid out of trouble?

Anybody know of any programs or tourneys geared towards this aim?

Disc golf keeps me out of trouble...

[Trashthrasher]

If my school had it way back when I went there, I might have stuck around longer (or at all, for that matter).

[Midnightbiker]

I practice next to the local Library, and they have asked me to put on a "Disc Golf Day" were I introduce kids and fairmiles to the sport of Disc Golf. Its still in the planning stages, but it should be happening during Spring Break in mid March. I am really looking forward to it. Most of the kids who visit the library are underprivileged and low income.

[mashnut]

I talked to the people who worked to get a course put in at a church near where I used too live, and their main reasons were to give the youths in their church a positive activity to do (both playing and course maintenance as a youth group), and to help make sure that their parking lot and grounds weren't being used by other kids doing less than desirable things.

[Scoot_er]

Originally Posted by Three Putt

Ozanam is a residential treatment facility for kids with emotional and behavioral problems in Kansas City. One of the big contributors to Ozanam, Bill Stueck, owns a big garden and landscaping retail company and he installed a disc golf course on some land he owns. The course is known as Thornfield, it's down by Olathe someplace. From what I can tell they hold fund raising tournaments out there for not for profit agencies. I'm not sure if they hold disc golf events out there for the kids those agencies serve or not. Ozanam is loosely affiliated with several other treatment facilities in Kansas City, so if they do have a disc golf program at Thornfield for those kids it would have the potential to serve a lot of kids.

Like I said, I'm not sure they are doing anything other than holding fund raising events there. From what I understand, the Stuecks are not even disc golfers. Basically I have no idea how this course came to be or how it is used, I just know it is there (and I can't play it!)

It was a pretty neat course and you made sense of why there were kids serving food and such during worlds at his place.

[wolito]

It might be a good idea if you get the kids on courses where the drinking and smoking are at a bare minimum or that might just influence them more. Sports in general have the potential to help all kinds of such kids as it gives them structure that may keep them from getting bored and thus getting into trouble.

[Midnightbiker]

I would just like to see kids put down the video games , and get off the couch. Kids being overweight these days is out of control. It was not like that when we grew up. They try to blame McDonald's, but we went just as much as kids today. The difference is , when we got home and on the weekends, we played outside. When I was a kid, staying inside was a punishment.

I can remember on Saturdays, after cartoons were over, we were outside till the sun went down. Then, if our mom was in a good mood, or she wanted to play with dad, they would let us play in the front yard after dark. We had some flood lights on the front of the house, so our front yard was lit pretty good at night.

We had a vacant lot at the end of our street growing up, and we used that lot to play football, baseball, throw the Frisbee, and you could get a balsa wood airplane glider at the corner store for 79 cents. We would play with those all afternoon in that lot. We also used it to fly kites on windy days.

There is a huge vacant lot where I practice right next to the local Library, and I have never seen one kid playing in that lot. It really makes me sad. I just don't understand kids now days. That lot is 3 times the size of the one we had growing up with. I don't understand why kids don't play outside anymore.

[NWcityguy2]

I've used Disc golf as a mean of getting a co-worker of mine away from a Casino. It didn't work 100% but was better then nothing. Of course that is the long and short of it though, you can't change someone but you can help them realize they have the ability to change themselves.

As far as a program for troubled kids that uses disc golf, I've never heard of one. The best place to look would be your local organizations that are already focusing on helping troubled youth and see if they were willing to consider disc golf as an activity to recommend. Now when I've done charity work before (local SPCA) they tend to have a surplus of everything except time, money and manpower. So you might want to think about what you or other people/groups in the area could bring to the table to make an idea a reality.