A few Prickly Pines Disc Golf Club members gather at Jeremy Priest’s memorial wearing shirts representing his favorite team — the Raiders.
COURTESY OF ANGELA PRIEST
Over the last few years, Elizabeth has become home to a thriving disc golf scene, with frequent events and fundraisers. The Prickly Pines Disc Golf Course, at Elizabeth’s Evans Park, was installed in 2018 while the Prickly Pines Club officially started in 2020 with about 25 homemade tags.
Now the club is 125 members strong, including a solid group of about 10 that work to promote and grow the club. Prickly Pines is the only club in this area, with most other clubs farther away in Denver and Colorado Springs.
“To give you a little intro, there’s a formal group out here called Prickly Pines Disc Golf Club and we do fundraisers to help maintain Prickly Pines Disc Golf Course and Creekside Community Church Disc Golf Course, along with fundraising for our community members,” said Angela Priest, whose late husband was a founding member of the club.
“We recently raised enough money to help put in concrete tee pads at Prickly Pines Course and we also held a fundraiser tournament at Creekside that raised money for a mobility chair for a 14-year-old cancer patient who had to have her leg amputated,” Priest said.
Priest’s husband, Jeremy, alongside his friend Cameron Burrow, built and designed both courses. Priest said other club members, including Greg Kennedy, contributed. “I became involved with the club after my husband passed in June of last year and the club kind of wrapped me and my family up to help us get through it,” she said.
The club’s annual fees help fund multiple disc golf course projects, such as the redesign and install of Prickly Pine’s sister course at Creekside Church, at 36100 CR 13 in Elizabeth. “We also donated seven bags of equipment to the local church youth group,” Priest said. “The club and local members also put together the memorial for my husband in collaboration with Mile High Disc Golf club.”
A Prickly Pines Disc Golf Club tag.
COURTESY OF ANGELA PRIEST
For the uninitiated, disc golf tags are how a club runs an ongoing, low-stakes competition without holding a tournament every week. Every member gets a numbered tag when they join with a lower number equaling a higher rank.
“When two members play together, they can play for tags. Winner takes the lower-numbered tag, loser takes the higher one,” Priest said. “… the system rewards consistent play because any given weekend, you can move up or down in your rank. It creates a built-in reason to show up because you can only move up if you show up. Tags turn casual rounds into a season-long community competition. There’s also a lot of pride that goes into carrying the tag, especially if it has a cool design.”
“Disc golf is all about bringing together local communities,” Priest said. Burrow agrees, saying the disc golf model is to “grow the sport.” Disc golf is an easy way for families to spend time outside together; there are a few regularly scheduled league events to do just that.
Year-round, the club has a Friday Night Glow and a Sunday morning round; during the summer, there will be one mid-week round on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. This round will alternate between the Prickly Pines and Creekside Church courses. For nighttime glow rounds, the baskets are lit with black lights and players use glow-in-the-dark discs. A Halloween Glow Tournament is scheduled for Oct. 17, with one daytime and one nighttime round.
The best place to find out about upcoming events and club information is the Prickly Pines Course Facebook page, tinyurl.com/prickly-pines-facebook, which currently has over 1,700 members. Events are also posted at tinyurl.com/prickly-pines-disc.
To learn more about Prickly Pines Disc Golf Club, visit pricklypinesdgc.com or pricklypinesdgc.com/about for a bit of their history.
The club works closely with Elizabeth Parks and Recreation, who let the club design and build the Prickly Pines course. For a course map, fees and more background information, visit elizabethpr.com/prickly-pines-disc-golf.