Murrysville Council will consider whether to add a disc golf course to Murrysville Community Park.

“It’s an extremely fast-growing sport, and it’s been on a real upward trajectory since covid,” said Dan Flanigan, a disc golf course designer with the Professional Disc Golf Association, which oversees leagues and tournaments across the U.S. “Disc golf courses are also awesome multi-use facilities — really a course is just an amazing trail through the woods, so bird enthusiasts and trail users in general can use and appreciate it.”

Murrysville Recreation Director Carly Greene said that’s part of why it appealed to municipal officials as well as park users, and was included in a 2017 list of possible park projects that built on the results of a resident survey.

“It’s got a lot of uses, and it’s utilizing a part of the park that, right now, doesn’t get any use at all,” Greene said.

A disc golf course is a series of tees where players toss a disc and try to place it inside a faraway chain-link basket.

Currently, Flanigan said, there are nearby disc golf courses at Oak Hollow Park in Irwin, Monroeville Community Park and Deer Lakes Park in West Deer.

And while the potential cost runs between $50,000 and $70,000, the project is light on infrastructure, according to Murrysville Chief Administrator Michael Nestico.

“It’s pretty minimal, with no building, utilities or anything like that,” he said.

In fact, aside from the small concrete tee boxes and the goal baskets, the course is essentially a trail through the woods, Flanigan said.

“We don’t remove any trees that are larger than about 4 inches in diameter,” he said. “We focus mostly on underbrush and clearing a walkable path from the tees to the baskets.”

Flanigan said regular players track their rounds through an app called UDisc. Statistics bear out the growing popularity of the sport, from 2.4 million rounds played in 2018 to 11.4 million in 2020 and 20.1 million last year.

“At Oak Hollow Park, more than 2,100 players have played more than 13,000 rounds there since the course was built,” Flanigan said. “And really, you’re only talking about regular players who record their rounds. Those numbers don’t count people who play casually or are just trying it out.”

Nestico said some of the donated funding that was originally intended for an amphitheater in the park — a project that was shelved over ballooning costs in 2024 — can likely be shifted to help fund the disc golf course, if council decides to move ahead with it.

He said municipal staff will bring additional details to council’s next meeting, set for 7 p.m. Aug. 6 at the municipal building, 4100 Sardis Road.

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