Middle Township to Host Ribbon Cutting Ceremony at Disc Golf Course

RIO GRANDE—Middle Township will host a ribbon cutting ceremony March 12 at 8:45 a.m. to celebrate the opening of the Disc Golf Course at the Robert “Ockie” Wisting Recreation Complex, located at 7 Fulling Mill Road.
The ceremony will be followed by the Cape May County Disc Golf Association’s First Annual Tag Release Tournament. The tournament, designed to create friendly competition within the local disc golf community, will include professional, amateur and recreational divisions for men, women and juniors. Winners will receive numbered tags in order of their placement, and throughout the year, players with tags can compete at any time for each other’s tags, in hopes of earning a lower-numbered tag to display on their disc bag.
Disc golf, a sport in which players throw specifically designed frisbees, or discs, toward and into a chain link basket, began to take form in the 1970s, when “Steady” Ed Headrick, of Santa Cruz, California, modeled the game after ball golf. Course co-creator, Jay Eppenbach, also from Santa Cruz, has been playing for over 20 years, and is thrilled to have recently installed this new course, and looks forward to spreading the word about the sport in this area. “Disc golf is a sport that anyone can play, regardless of age or skill level. At its best, it is a precision sport like ball golf, but it can also be a recreational hike in the woods, throwing a few Frisbees around.”
While there will be avid disc golfers competing in the tournament from around the tri-state area, there is also a recreational division for those just getting started, and Eppenbach and co-creator Herb Phillips encourage anyone who is curious to come out to the course at any time and try it. Eppenbach and Phillips, along with a number of dedicated and hard-working disc golfers from Cape May, Wildwood, Vineland and Philadelphia, have been working with Middle Township Recreation Department for over five years to get the course installed, and recently have been carefully sculpting fairways and paths along lines approved by the DEP and EPA. Because the course winds through an area that has been overgrown and mostly untouched for decades, there are still environmental hazards such as thorny vines and ticks to avoid, but as the Rec Department’s plans progress and there is more foot traffic, Eppenbach and Phillips expect the course to continue to take shape. “This course is now officially on the map for disc golfers, and this tournament is sanctioned by the Professional Disc Golf Association. Disc golfers tend to seek out courses, and we’re proud to be pulling more of them down to Cape May County to enjoy this course and all of the things we have to offer.”  For more information about the tournament, visit the Cape May County Disc Golf Association’s Facebook page, or go directly to the registration link at
http://www.discgolfscene.com/tournaments/1st_Annual_CMCDGA_Tag_Release_Tournament_2016.
“If you had told me five years ago that the first meaningful event on the site would be a Disc Golf Tournament, I wouldn’t have been surprised,” said Committeeman Tim Donohue. “Jay Eppenbach and his crew have never lost the faith through a long, tedious and grinding struggle with permits, bureaucrats and state-mandated red tape.”
The Ockie Wisting Complex, located at the 82-acre former Fort Apache Campground site, is being developed into a recreation site through a $582,000 in funding from the Cape May County Open Space Program. In addition to the disc golf course, recreational opportunities at the Ockie Wisting Complex will include wildlife observation deck, boardwalk and fishing pier at the pond area, along with a picnic area, playground, walking trails, and stage for acoustic performances. The site will also boast five soccer fields funded through public-private partnerships with Cape Express Soccer Club.