This story originally appeared in UDisc's 2025 Disc Golf Growth Report.
When Ken Loukinen moved to Colombia in 2019, disc golf was virtually nowhere to be found.
A retired firefighter, Loukinen picked up the sport in Florida 15 years ago. While recovering from a motorcycle accident, he caught wind of physical therapists encouraging patients to use the Playstation Move, a controller for Sony's flagship video game system intended to get people up and, well, moving. He bought one that was bundled with Sports Champions, a game that included several mini-games like table tennis, bocce, and archery.
And disc golf.
Loukinen was hooked from the jump and soon found there were real live courses in his area. Well on the road to recovery, he purchased two starter packs and set out for his first round at Markham Park in Sunrise. He lost two discs that day, but gained a lifelong passion.
When it came time to hang up his helmet, he had Medellín, Colombia, on his radar thanks to its reputation as the City of Eternal Spring. He relocated and was indeed greeted with perfect year-round conditions – and only one disc golf basket for its 2.6 million people.
Undeterred, he brought five portable targets and several hundred donated discs with him, intent on planting the seeds of the sport he had fallen in love with so long ago. And he had a hunch he could do just that – with a little help from like-minded folks, that is.
"I figured once I met Ultimate players, I could get this going," Loukinen said.
Around the same time, Neeno Melo and his partner Andrea Trujillo Rendón were exploring disc golf. The pair of Ultimate players found temporary courses on UDisc with the note, "I have baskets and discs. Contact Ken…" And they did, finally matching Loukinen with the fellow disc sports enthusiast he was looking for.
More Ultimate players came out of the woodwork in early 2020 when their preferred sport was shuttered as collateral damage during the early days of COVID. Disc golf, then, provided Frisbee fans in the region with an athletic outlet, and after connecting with local authorities to gain approval to play, word spread and a community grew.
"I gave everybody a putter, a midrange, and a driver and spent the first day showing them the technique to throw a golf disc," Loukinen recalled of his first organized meetup. "After a couple hours of improving a little bit of technique, we met the following weekend, and I heard the stories of, 'We tried this in the past, but just didn't find this fun.' They were exposed to weird discs and didn't have baskets. Nobody knew the rules, nobody knew you broke up into groups of four.
"Once we started playing in groups of four, they really saw the potential," Loukinen said. "We've been meeting every weekend since then."
The scene has only grown more organized. Loukinen hooked up with the Paul McBeth Foundation, who donated funds and helped locals install AeroParque Juan Pablo II DGC and Disc Golf GTA in 2021. Colombian players have taken to producing baskets locally for around $350 each to save on import fees – shipping and customs would roughly double their costs – and Loukinen went a step further by convincing the PDGA to trade its in-hand basket approval process that required applicants to ship a copy to the organization for instead vetting the target via a Zoom call.
Fast forward to the present. Leagues have formed, tournaments are sprouting up, and the sport is thriving.
- Rounds scored on UDisc in Colombia grew 80% from 2023 to 2024.
- The number of unique disc golfers jumped 45%.
- Melo is prepping a new course in Cali, a city of 2.2 million about 275 miles/440 kilometers south of Medellín.
Disc golf has also attracted the attention of INDER, the country's parks and recreation authority. Loukinen said it is planning to build two courses on farmland areas where they have interests in protecting the water supply; the organization observed that players took care of the natural environment at the existing courses and was more than game to offer the land.
The most exciting sign of Colombia's potential, though, is not the where, but the who. Unlike some developing countries where American expats have imported disc golf and rely largely on tourism for their growth, Colombian players have bought in and are organizing to move it forward.
- 96% of rounds played in 2024 came from Colombian players, one of the highest rates of local play in any country.
As much as he could take credit, Loukinen chalked up the success not just to his efforts, but to the Ultimate players like Melo and Rendón who have adopted disc golf as their own.
"After the first year I realized I could've moved," Loukinen said, "but disc golf was going to stay."
