Photo by Deb Gau Michelle Full, at right, plays disc golf on Thursday, with some coaching on technique from Glenn Bader. Members of the public were invited to play on Thursday after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new disc golf course at Independence Park

MARSHALL — When some local fans of disc golf started sharing ideas for a possible course in Marshall, one location came to mind: Independence Park.

“We were like, ‘This would be a fantastic course,'” said Jordan Schroeder. Schroeder would go on to design a possible course and present the idea to the city of Marshall.

It took a few years of work and lots of community partnerships, but an 18-hole disc golf course, The Ponds, is now an official part of Independence Park. Community members gathered for a ribbon-cutting and dedication of the course on Thursday afternoon.

“This is a beautiful course, and it is the result of the community really coming together, so we’re really excited,” said Glenn Bader, one of the supporters of the project.

“I think it’s better than we ever could have imagined,” Schroeder said.

The new course is over a mile long, with “holes” spread out around Independence Park, said Marshall Parks and Recreation Superintendent Preston Stensrud. The park now has permanent launch areas set in the ground, and markers showing the fairways of the course. Members of the public can bring their discs or frisbees, and try to get them to land in the basket-like “holes” along the course.

Schroeder said The Ponds started out as “just a pipe dream” that grew from conversations he and the Bader family had in 2021. While there is a disc golf course at Garvin Park, there wasn’t one closer to Marshall, he said.

“I, just as a member of the community, shot an email to Preston,” Schroeder said. Disc golf is a growing sport that is easy and inexpensive for people to get into, he said. “It’s a great way to get outside, stay active, and not pay ball golf prices.”

“I just hope that this course can be for the community what disc golf has been in my life,” Schroeder said.

Baskets for the disc golf course were set up in Independence Park in 2023, while launch pads were built in 2024, Stensrud said.

Schroeder and Bader said The Ponds has already seen a good response from players visiting Marshall, based on data from a disc golf app called UDisc. With UDisc, players can keep score for their disc golf games on their phones. Based on data from the app, more than 200 different players visited The Ponds over the past year. Most players came from the Marshall area, but there were players logged from as far away as California, New Jersey, and Canada.

“Disc golf as a sport is rapidly growing,” Bader said. “There’s four new courses that go up every day in the U.S., and 90% of them are free … It’s just a great thing that you can do as a whole family.”

Bader said he had played a round of disc golf at Independence Park every month of the year for the past two years.

“If you’re brave enough, you play even in the winter,” he said.

Stensrud said community sponsors and local businesses helped make The Ponds possible.

“What we did is kind of figured out our cost for the project, and then kind of worked backwards,” he said. “We sold sponsorships, basically for each hole, and a couple of people also gave money to put into wherever the project needed.” In addition to support from community sponsors, MVP Disc Golf Sports donated the baskets for the course, he said.

Another community member, Emma Schroeder, designed the graphics for the course maps around the park. In the past, Schroeder had also designed the signs for the Garvin Park disc golf course.

“It was fun coming up with a design,” Emma said of the Ponds project. She used the Marshall city logo as inspiration for the color scheme of the signs and maps. She also studied maps and photos of the park to make sure she had an accurate map of the trees along the course.

“It’s really exciting,” she said of the finished project. “It’s very fulfilling to see what you’ve been doing on the computer for so long, printed.”

People can come and enjoy The Ponds on their own, Schroeder and Bader said there are also opportunities to meet people to play with. A weekly disc golf league meets at Independence Park on Thursdays starting at 5:30 p.m..

Schroeder also said The Ponds will host its first formal tournament next Saturday, Sept. 20. The Southwest Minnesota Smash will be a Professional Disc Golf Association C-tier event. So far, amateur and pro disc golf players from Minnesota, South Dakota, and Illinois will be participating.

Players can register for the Southwest Minnesota Smash 2025 online at https://www.discgolfscene.com/tournament/South west_Smash_2025.