Panther's Lair @ Potomac Middle School - Dumfries, VA

[G Bud]

Panther's Lair @ Potomac Middle School, 3130 Panther Pride Drive, Dumfries, VA 22026

This course will be set up temporarily for public preview on July 10th (11 - 7) and July 11th (9 - 5).
Please come play our design and tell us what you think.

We are very much down the development road on this one. The above picture is not installed but the property is marked and we are moving towards installation. The club Forum where you can find the course thread is: http://dgcnv.manaze.com/forum/index.php This is the Northern VA DG Club forum and you might have to register to view the forum. This course thread is under the "Other Courses" Menu.
The property consists of three elevations with the school on the highest, a good 40 - 50' lower is the football field and finally a similar drop to the soccer field. Because of the fields, trees don't come into play much. Yellow OB are 8' Chain-link fences. The white tee #6 would be our signature hole. (in pic #3, the tee is on the hill behind the bleachers.) When finally installed, the course will not be playable during school hours or after school activities.
I am the music department chair and teach orchestra & guitar at the school. We don't have very much DG going on here in Prince William County, VA. I know of two other middle schools in county that have DG courses. I mentioned this to the PE department chair in passing one day in April. She presented it to the Principal and 24 hours later, I found myself with the task of designing a course on campus. I owe a ton of thanks to Dave Steger and Tim Beron for their help and expertise on this project. We probably won't be this close without them.
The Principal is funding the project and we are working with the EDGE organization in purchasing the equipment. These folks have been great and we are just waiting for the books to open on the new school year to place our equipment order with them.
The design was near complete prior to the end of school so I couldn't resist but to get some kids on the course. We found out that the elementary school across the parking lot had Frisbee Golf targets (that's what is on the box) and we borrowed these just to get play started. They are little more then a big fish net on PVC piping but they were definitely better then nothing. My 8th graders were really jacked with the activity and most came out the four days we played. Some pic are attached.

Upon follow up with EDGE we found that the DisCatcher Pros are on back ordered until September but they will send us the installation sleeves so we can get the major part of installation done in the next few weeks. Tees will be natural and have to be under the mower line. So they will be a basic toe-line with a 4' pressure treated half round flanked by tee colored pavers with tee number & distance. Tee installation will begin next week.
So as mentioned at the front end, we are impatient and are gathering baskets to set this course up to be played by the public. It is designed to be player friendly from beginner to pro level players. We even have a super secret Blue Tee layout. We don't plan to get to that until what you see in the current picture is complete. So plans for growth are already in the works.
This will not be our only preview week this summer. But we hope if you are in the MD/DC/NoVa metro area, you'll stop by and check us out.

[G Bud]

Our temporary set up, though attended by just a few, went very well and people came back to play a second day. We were up against a good size area tourney so many top, competitive players were unable to attend. We are considering setting up the design again next Sunday (7/18). If the interest to play the course is there, I think we will go for it. PM me if this applies to you.

Not much action from the green tees but the best scores were a -7 from the red tees and a -6 from the white tees. But the really best score was seeing that the design is solid and people enjoy playing it. Can't wait until it is permanent.

[Radarx]

I will be playing Giles run next Sunday in the Lorton area next weekend, Should have enough time to run down a couple exits to Dumfries. Think its about 15-20 min drive from Giles.

[G Bud]

Originally Posted by Radarx

I will be playing Giles run next Sunday in the Lorton area next weekend, Should have enough time to run down a couple exits to Dumfries. Think its about 15-20 min drive from Giles.

Even quicker if traffic is good. Hope we'll see ya!

[G Bud]

Just got the word from my Boss and we will not be able to open the course this Sunday, 7/18. For now our efforts will focus on Installation.

Stay Tuned!

[G Bud]

Spent the weekend stenciling bricks for the tee markers.



We're going with natural tees basically with a toe line. Add a 4 ft piece of 2X4 pressure treated and here's what the final product should look like.



The exposed wood will be painted white once installed. Installation begins tomorrow.

I also spoke with the folks at EDGE. They are confident they will be shipping us equipment later this week and we should start getting it late next week. So the ball is rolling and we enter the next phase - Installation.

[G Bud]

This is a little tougher task than I thought it would be. But it still needs to get done. Knocked out #1 on Tuesday & #2 today. With the Virginia heat and humidity, my body will not let me do more than three at one shot. So we'll just do one hole at a time. Sure glad it's only a 9 hole. Hole 3 on Friday.

Here's what they look like once in the ground. I think they will work great!

1st one in!


Then came red.


The White tee for 1 is on the side walk so it has a little different set up. But here is the white tee 4 which was in the area.


The fun continues on Friday with Hole #3.

[chrishysell]

How much did the bricks set you back? I have been wanting to do something like that at Dorey Park.

[G Bud]

Originally Posted by chrishysell

How much did the bricks set you back? I have been wanting to do something like that at Dorey Park.

The bricks are retaining wall caps. I think Lowe's calls them Castle wall caps. They run about $1.84 a brick. (54 bricks in all to do three tees for nine holes.) My principal was worried about kids pulling them up but the bricks are a good 3 inches thick and the rough sides I hope will help to set them in the ground and make them harder to pull up.
Then 8 ft pressure treated 2X4s cut in half for 4 ft toe lines. (14) The paint I had sitting around the house so no cost there. All totaled was about $175.00 for materials.
I went with this due to the fact that any tee stuff had to below the mower cut line and we couldn't put signs or raised materials around the playing fields. This was a good cheap solution. Let me know if you need some help or have more questions.

[chrishysell]

That #4 is huge. You would need bigger blocks if you had an 18 hole course. I'm going to do something similar. I think i'll skip the board at the end. It will become a nuisance eventually.