Retired nurse Line Richard goes to the disc golf course at Claude D. Taylor elementary school almost every day.
Though the Riverview course has only been in operation for a little over a year, Richard has been playing the low-impact sport for over 20 years.
“I had my first date, in 1998, with my now husband playing disc golf in Calgary,” she said in an interview.
Since moving to Riverview in 2010, she and her husband would regularly drive to a disc golf course in Sackville.
She was thrilled when one opened closer to home.
“We used to go play (in Sackville) and nobody was there…All of the sudden everybody’s around and everybody’s having a lot of fun playing. It’s become like a family now,” she said.
CDT Disc Golf President Blake Reynolds said there’s been a huge uptake in interest in the sport since they opened the course in October of 2021.
“It’s totally exceeded our expectations,” he said. “In the last year we’ve had over 11,000 rounds recorded here at this small little course.”
Ontario native Brian Melanson has been going to the course since he moved to New Brunswick.
“I just moved to this province in October of last year and that’s how I know everybody here,” he said. “I just came to the course and started playing and we’ve all been friends the whole time.”
He even has a disc golf basket in his living room so he can practice at home.
Reynolds said his group has been collaborating with the Anglophone East school district to introduce the sport into the physical education curriculum.
“Last Spring we invited a group of phys ed teachers out to introduce them to the sport,” he said.
After getting positive feedback from the teachers and the district they partnered with Flickline, a disc golf service company, to create a program to teach others to teach disc golf.
“There’s been a huge uptake in the schools in bringing that to their curriculum,” he said.
He’s hoping to one day see tournaments between schools.
While Dieppe already has a disc golf course, Reynolds says there are plans to bring one to Moncton in the near future.