Hillside Elementary in Harrison was selected in the spring to receive a grant that will add disk golf to it’s physical education curriculum during the upcoming school year.
The school was approved for a grant package worth $1,300 from The Educational Disc Golf Experience, or EDGE. The package came with four disk basket catchers, 50 disks, roughly 40 disk golf markers and a few frisbees for other sports, such as ultimate frisbee.
EDGE is a California-based nonprofit organization that promotes physical activity in schools through their disk golf curriculum program.
According to Michael Long, the fifth grade teacher at Hillside, the school contributed $300 for the equipment package.
Long initially applied for the grant because the school wanted the students to become more physically active. He also has a personal passion for encouraging physical activity.
“I thought the use of disk golf would be a great avenue to look at,” he said. “We have a lot of unstructured time in the recess time, so it would be nice to have something positive to do that’s structured to help keep them out of trouble and learn a skill that they can hold on to.”
Long also claims that disk golf can also help in other areas in school, including math, science and environmental studies.
“With the math and science, it’s all about the angles and the force in motion,” he said. “It’s about learning the angles of throwing and the amount of distance needed to get the disk into the basket.”
The EDGE program is planned to be implemented into the current physical education portion of school time.
According to Long, several materials will be used to promote the educational aspect of the sport, including worksheets and separate lesson plans for the third, fourth and fifth grades.
“It was a great deal for our school to get P.E. equipment and to get something going on in our school.”
The program teaches students the fundamentals of the disk golf game and how it relates to the other subjects they are learning.
The grant was given to the school based on the amount of students who are within the poverty level.
“When I applied for it, they took a look at the socio-economic status of our building,” he said. “We have a high poverty level within our school.”
On Oct. 12, an assembly will take place at Hillside to kick off the grant. Michigan disk golf professional Willie Prince will be there to hold three disk golf assemblies, one for each of the schools grades.
“I contacted several disk golf companies and Latitude 64, who creates disks, referred me to Prince,” Long said, “I emailed him and we went back and forth until he decided that he would come down and do an assembly for our kids.”
Long said that he wanted a professional to help teach the students more about the sport, rather than just someone who was just an enthusiast.
Prince most recently finished second out of 143 players at the Great Lakes Open in Milford. He was only bested by Paul McBeth, who Long claims is “one of the best players in the world.”
