NEFA DISCussion

This is EXCELLENT news

This evening I met with the Norwalk Director of Parks & Recreation. Ryan Brunelle joined us and we walked the course at Cranbury Park. What was discussed and decided is as follows:

1) This fall, changes will be made to the layout of the course that will accomodate the new park entrance. The course will go from the current layout of 19 holes to a more traditional 18 holes. The changes will be as follows:
The first 4 holes will be removed as will #'s 17 & 18. Holes 5 & 6 will become holes 1 & 2. From there there will be 5 new holes back in the woods behind where most of the current course is. These holes will have more elevation than any do currently. Hole 8 will then play up to the current #7 basket. Holes 9 through 17 will be the current holes 8-16. Hole 18 will be the current hole 19.

2) The city is going to purchase 18 flypads for potential installation this fall. Also to be purchased by the city are all the other materials necessary needed to build new, proper Tee pads. i.e. 6X6 pressure treated lumber and stone dust.

3) Over the next three years, the oldest 15 baskets (3 were upgraded recently) will be replaced with 15 Mach New's. They will be replaced 5 at a time with the city buying 4 and the Cranbury Park Discgolf Club buying 1 each year. (NEFA grant?)

4) The Friends of Cranbury Park (a volunteer organization) will be contacted and enlisted to get sponsorship for benches on each hole. This will be an on-going process until all 18 holes have their own bench. (No more used lawn furniture and tree stumps.)

5) Starting in the spring of 2007, discgolf players will be able to purchase a scorecard and pencil at the park entrance for $1. Additional plans for Cranbury Park hotstamped discs and Cranbury Park discgolf course T-shirts a/o collared shirts will also come about in 2007.


In order to do all of this, we will need to have a large crew of volunteer workers and also to schedule a series of work days. Some of the initial work like putting anchors and collars can be done now. The materials needed for that will be paid for out of the course fund (my pocket). The remaining work (tee boxes) can be done when the materials are purchased by the city, over the next 4-8 weeks. A schedule of work days will be posted here shortly after the CT States on Sept 23rd. Stay tuned.

Adam you know you can count on the friZZaks to be there.. Cranbury is getting a face lift!!

Very good and exciting news! Great going and thank you Adam and Ryan for all you've done and continue to do for Cranbury............

im in, thats hot. Mach News? This couldnt be changed to an other baskets, mach news kinda have a bad rep of cuts through i.e holes 9, 16, and 19's baskets. What other baskets are of comprable price?

grats to you guys, glad the whole course isnt going to get screwed due to the town's other plans for the changes within the park. in fact, it sounds like things are looking way up!

Adam, I had a couple of thoughts as far as the new proposed holes.
All but one of the new holes follows a walking trail...can we wait until the leaves have fallen to look at alternatives...just a thought!

My neightbor (Mickey Stayman) & I would like to sponser hole nine or soon to be hole ten. We would like to move the short position to a site yet to be determined since that could become a tee for hole 10 or soon to be 11. We would make improvements by cleaning up the fairway, tee area and green. We are also offering to bye a basket for the hole so it will have two pin positions and also try and determine a second tee area.

Let us know....Thanks Tim

changes happened and the course will be alot beTTer
come down in 3 weeks to help us with tee boxs and signs

I heard there is a work day scheduled for this saturday, is that right?
I thought Adam told me 11-12-06 at 10 am.

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Matt, I can not make it Saturday at FDR..To busy at work!
I thought the work day was on Sunday the 12th..maybe Adam F. or Ryan could let us know for sure.
Tim

Hi Adam,

What's happening to the old baskets that you are replacing? Any chance of donating them to new NEFA courses, like Devens? We have almost raised enough money to buy our first 9 but could use your old ones for the back 9 in the meantime. Be like Borderland DG and spread the love to your younger brother in MA!

Let me know. Thanks!

- John

John,

The plan is to use the old baskets from Cranbury Park for a new 9 hole course in Norwalk, CT on the Oyster Bend property. Sorry.

Also, we're replacing these baskets in 3 waves of 5 each over the next two years so there wouldn't be 9 available for quite some time.

No problem. I just had to ask -- you never know! Glad to see they'll be helping another course.

Wow, it's a different course and i'm sad to bid farewell to the first 4 holes , not too ripped up about losing the last two but love the 5 new holes. Very tight, good elevation changes and it will be nicer once traffic/time open them up a bit more. Much thanks to all who labored.

The only question i have is why not move the entire course into the vast open woods that surround the new holes and get even further away from doggies and walkers. Perhaps in the future this could happen. I wouldn't miss the old 10,11, & 13 holes which are still in play.

I've heard a lot of whinning while out there , i think we need to remember that the course HAD to be moved and a lot of people have done a lot of work on their own time/dime to make the best course possible.

Onward and upward...

Matt, Thanks for the words of support.

I'd like to reiterate that there has been a LOT of work done in the last couple months. And it takes a lot of effort to get it done. Unfortunately, there is really only a small core of people who are doing most of this work. Over the next few months there will be some more work days needed to complete all of the planned changes. It would really be great if we could get a larger group out each time.

Plans are to have one more work day this fall to get lumber for the remaining twelve teeboxes out onto the course.
Then in the spring we will need at least two or three more work days to build the tee boxes and install the flypads on all 18 holes.

Please stay tuned for these work day anouncements and try to come out and help.

thoughts on the teeboxes.... almost killed myself twice because its tough to followthough on the box when its 6in high. I'm not the only person with this problem. Not good.

then dont plant on the end of the teebox if you want to follow through, genius or stand & deliver

Will

We (or you) can move the front board off of any teebox that you might be challenged by...until the boxes are all fully built.
My hope was that we could get some positive motion going toward more people working on the course. Your criticism is counter-productive.

How is my criticism counter-productive. Those boxes could hurt someone, they almost did to me, if someone gets hurt and sues the town, the course gets pulled. I was out there the first day, and I work on sundays, and I brought out people to help, so before you make statements like that, think about who you're talking to.

Will, if you think that the boards on the front of the teeboxes are an issue then, as I suggested, go ahead and move them to one side (productive) instead of complaining about it (counter-productive). And thanks for your concern. We'll see you next work day.

Mad props to all those who labored on the improvements!

I'm sure the narrow fairways on the new holes will force me to get my game together more than the holes that were replaced. I'm at the end of my first year of playing, and hopefully playing on more demanding holes will help me improve on my performance in the one tournament I've entered so far: last place in the CT States Am 2 division. But I had a great time!

Erik Chabot

Just want to say thanks to everyone for helping out with the course changes/improvements.

We need a big work day to drop the nest 6 tee box materials in. Whats the date?

hole 6 looks like we could tweak it a little back and move the basket location maybe.

The front 9 is awesome. We've been getting great reviews from a variety of people. We still encountered the dog walking problem on hole 10 and 11. We desperatly need to move them off the paths. There's some great wooded areas adjacent to the paths. Old hole 13 was a problem as well with walkers so we should discuss taking it out and adding a hole by 8,9,10.

hole 2's tee box needs to be relocated back by the mulch pile.

We dug some tees signs in and played doubles it was a great time..
Sjur and Dome shot -8(54) to win. the new dubs record.
singles record is me with 48. Bobby 2'd hole 7 long!

Come play the new layout its a new experience.

I moved the teebox for hole 7 back to where it was originally. Here's why:

We're going to put long tees on most of the holes. Hole 7 will definitely be one of them. I already have the lumber to build long tee signs for at least 9-12 holes.

Where it had been moved to is in the same stream flow zone as the basket of hole 6. Eventually water errosion would totally wash the box away in this location. The original spot is about a foot higher in elevation.

The holes have been measured, signs have been made for the original location.

And on a related note, whoever moved the box has lost some of the tie rods that were put with the lumber to secure it down. There were ten put there with the lumber. I found seven scattered around. Looks like the other three are lost.

Today I was able to do the following:

Raked and cleared paths from - Hole 8 to 9, Hole 7 to 8 and hole 5 to 6.
There were many players out today and I was able to help direct them on there way. We really need to change hole 6.. it is just to wet near the basket.
I will try and put in more time next Sunday.
Tim

I Spoke to Parks & Rec this morning and have a couple of updates.

Mike at P&R feels it's better not to put all the rest of the lumber out in the woods until we're ready to fully build the teeboxes i.e. dig them in, fill them up with stone dust and add the flypads. So, we're going to wait until spring to do this. We still have a firm promise that the materials will be provided. That's not an issue.

This is probably not a bad idea. It'll give us a few months to let the new layout simmer and we can decide if we want to tweak anything.

Mike was also PISSED that someone tried to steal a polehole and said that next time we need to call the police and have them arested!!! Evidently there's been a rash of vandalism lately to city property and he's getting fed up.

The polehole with the broken collar can be fixed with little effort by P&R staff. And they can do it at the Park. We'll get that done in the next week or so.

The new Cranbury layouts should be completed in the spring......Its going to be heartbreakingly pure.

Just in time for the FriZZak Open II

Yeah Frizzies! Warwick?? Poker?? DBDD??

Sponsor a hole for the FriZZak Open II.....whatda say?

Somebody took some spray paint and marked in between the new holes. This wasn't a terrible idea. But painting a lot of bright orange on the trees isn't best. And incorrectly numbering the holes actually IS a bad idea.

Also, somebody's been cutting trees down and leaving them next to the stump, sometimes still connected, which is also a bad idea.

Painting on the trees or cutting them down is not allowed by discgolfers (or anyone else) in the park. Let's please stick to what the city has given us permission to do.

btw, There will be some more "next tee" signs going up soon. These were approved by Parks & Rec. So please, no more spray painting. Thanks

To all discgolfers who play at Cranbury Park,
There have been some unsanctioned course improvements going on lately that are catching the eyes of the wrong people. There is now a "Friends of Cranbury Park" committee complete with a Board of Directors (which I am a member of) who have been donating a LOT of time and money to improve the park. Lately, they have noticed some things that were not part of the course improvement plans. And to be honest, most of the concern items are legit. Here is the note I received today. Please read it and spread the word to everyone you know that we need to curb these activities. With all of the work we're doing to improve the course now, this is the wrong time to have negative scrutiny toward discgolfers. Again, please just read the note and spread the word. Thanks and Peace.

Hi Adam,

We’ve gotten several inquiries from park users about a couple of disc-golf related issues. Since you're the disc golf representative on the board, I’m writing to get information I can report back to our members.

First, are the fluorescent orange markings (spray-painted arrows, large circles, etc) on trees intended to be permanent? They seem to be increasing. Around Tees 8 and 9, for example, there are quite a few, and some people are a little disturbed by their unsightly appearance. If they aren’t permanent, when will they be going away?

Second, a number of broad fairways have been cut through parts of the woods. Is the extensive tree-cutting authorized, and if so, will it be ending now? Trees were felled (and left lying where they were cut), and the short tree trunks create obstacles to walkers. Deep holes and pipe stubs remain where tees have been removed. These are hazards.

And finally—as you probably know, our trail and dog etiquette signs are now up, and it’s our job to back up the rules by modeling them. A number of people have pointed out that some golfers with dogs are making no effort to keep their dogs off the main green. Since the golf enterprise is known to be a part of the FCP organization, the appearance of dog-owning golfers on the green suggests that the rules aren’t for everybody—a very bad impression.

Thoughts on that...

Was badgered by a dog today that wasnt leashed, havent seen any unleashed dogs recently by disc golfers, dont really know what they are talking about, have been at the park every day this week.

Signs for ettiquette are placed hindering golf shots, whats the deal with this?

Walkers are moving though fairways where there are no trails, why bother moving the holes?

I agree the new florecent paint is ugly, dont know who did this, how do we remove it? Perhaps some new next tee signs would be a good investment for the course fund? or someone could donate? Have noticed there are a group of dog walkers (the wolfie contingent) which walk 6 wide or more, eroding trails, much more hazardous than a few cut trees, especially since they will not be noticeable in the spring and summer.

what are those pipe things? Who is the president of the friends of cranbuy?