'Disc Golf Anywhere' is an ongoing series. It explores ideas for fitting innovative disc golf facilities in nooks and crannies where more communities can enjoy the benefits of the game, such as increasing physical and mental health, turning neglected spaces into bustling hubs of activity, and affordability (89% of courses are free to play).
A Tight Fit in...Nebraska?
Space is not usually scarce in Nebraska, which is part of the large, flat, and often sparsely populated Great Plains of the United States. The Cornhusker State is, for instance, more than double the size of Portugal, but it has just over 2 million residents while the much smaller European country has 10.75 million.
The city of Lincoln, Nebraska, however, doesn't fit into state norms. It has a population density rivaling the Chicago metropolitan area and tightly-gridded residential sectors. The cramped quarters mean anyone with the goal to build a disc golf course well within city limits has to create maximum fun with minimum space.
Someone who took on that challenge was James Fleege, vice president of the Lincoln Flying Disc Club (LFDC). He designed Bethany Beginners Disc Golf Course, a track friendly to first-time disc golfers and fun for experienced ones within walking distance of many Lincoln neighborhoods. The course saw over 4,000 rounds recorded on UDisc last year and tons more not tracked in the app.
Fleege filled us in on what made his city interested in creating Bethany Beginners and how it's helping Lincolnites get outside and active.
Finding the Right Park for Disc Golf
The way for the Bethany Beginners project was paved with the success of Beal Slough Disc Golf Course. Located in a railroad corridor near the southern edge of the city where open land is easier to come by, the challenging par 60 course was built in 2021. It was well-received from the start and as of 2025 ranked as the best disc golf course in Nebraska as well as 70th in the world's best 100 disc golf courses.
Once the positive reviews of Beal Slough started flooding in, the city of Lincoln was quite receptive to more disc golf. It offered four parks to the LFDC as potential sites for beginner-oriented courses, which Fleege was quick to vet.
"After visiting each site, I narrowed the top options down to Roberts Park and Bethany Park," said Fleege. "Roberts Park has a great mix of mature trees, open space, and gentle elevation changes, but it also comes with some significant challenges — mainly its proximity to arterial roads. The biggest concern is that the park is split by a road, and the only crossing point is right next to that busy street, which creates a clear safety issue."
Fleege was well aware of the difficulties that constructing a crosswalk would bring — the city would first need to conduct a traffic study, adding additional logistical and financial hurdles to the Roberts Park project. That left Bethany Park as the prime choice.
Save for a 20-year-old collection of baskets on the Nebraska Wesleyan University campus, Bethany Park would be the only disc golf option in a 5-mile/8-kilometer radius and would make the game accessible by foot for at least three nearby neighborhoods. The owner of local disc golf store Zen Llama was also excited that an accessible beginners course was going up in the area where he could direct first-time customers.
A Small Disc Golf Course Designed for Big Fun
In Bethany Park, Fleege had around 5.6 acres/2.3 hectares of land to work with surrounded on all sides by either homes or roads. To get started, Fleege enlisted the help of the Parks Department and the Lincoln Parks Foundation (a nonprofit arm of the Parks department) in both financing and the very important task of getting nearby residents' buy-in for the project.
"They helped with fundraising and facilitated public meetings that addressed concerns from nearby residents while also giving us a chance to highlight the positive recreational and community benefits of adding a disc golf course," Fleege said.
A donation portal was set up on the Lincoln Parks Foundation website where excited community members could donate. Tee sign sponsors provided a large amount of financial backing, and the LFDC president, Trenton Franz, secured a few additional grants to complete the funding. Fleege and Franz then started solving the puzzle of fitting a nine-hole course into the small park that would be great for beginners and enjoyable short-range practice for experienced players.
"One of my main priorities in course design is making sure the layout fits the intended skill level," Fleege said. "Every element of a hole — the shot shapes, the risk and reward, the obstacles — should be a fair and reasonable challenge for the players it's designed for."
Fleege uses guidelines for hole lengths and difficulties from the Professional Disc Golf Association, which include recommendations for – from easiest to hardest – purple, green, red, white, blue, and gold hole lengths. No course in Lincoln featured the two easiest hole categories (purple and green), so Fleege decided the Bethany Park Course was the perfect place to offer them.
He designed the nine-hole course so that every hole had two options, one correlating to a purple hole length and the other to a green. In the language of UDisc disc golf course difficulty ratings, the purple tees are Very Short and the greens Short.
"The holes there strike a good balance of shot shapes and obstacles, but everything is scaled appropriately for beginners," said Fleege. "The idea is to help new players build confidence and fundamentals while still having fun and seeing progress in their scores. That way, as they move on to more advanced courses, they're already familiar with many of the challenges they'll face — just at a higher level of difficulty."
Because beginning disc golfers have a wide range of error on throws, safety for players and pedestrians was always front of mind as Fleege designed. He used mature trees both as obstacles and buffers to keep players and discs out of other fairways or nearby amenities. Thirty trees were planted in the park to aid in this goal. Along with the newly-planted foliage, Fleege used the existing shape of the park as a way to keep discs off of roads.
"For the holes that run along the park's perimeter, I designed the layout to flow counterclockwise so that discs from right-hand backhand players fade back toward the fairway or green," Fleege said. "On the two holes that play near the heavily-used playground, players throw away from it but still have clear sightlines."
Bethany Beginners' holes average 195 feet/59 meters from the longer tees and 138 feet/42 meters from the shorts, and the park features enough ostacles to keep things interesting but is free of places where lost discs are likely. All of those features make it a great place for disc golfers just starting out to find that perfect mixture of challenge and success that makes people want to stick with the game. For more experienced players, it provides the excitement of an ace chance on every hole as well as the opportunity for a quick round on a course that's easily accessible (on average, playing all 18 tees at Bethany takes under an hour whereas 18 holes at Beal Slough is about a two-hour venture).
Bright Ideas for Beginner-Friendly Disc Golf: A Disc Library & Instructional Signage
Along with a beginner-friendly design, the Bethany Park disc golf course has other thoughtful details that make it top-notch for people just discovering the game. The LFDC installed a free disc library at the first hole that is maintained by local club members. The library is filled with discs anyone at the park can borrow and play the course with – making it fast and simple for people who get interested to play immediately.
Initially, the club was unsure if they could keep the library stocked, but after a Facebook post asking local disc golfers to drop off any old or unused discs, the library was quickly filled and has continuously had inventory for new players.
Fleege also designed sponsored signage in both English and Spanish with tips for managing disc angles and navigating obstacles to help new players learn the basics while they play, including relevant rules and etiquette. As a bit of local pride, each sign also has a little compass pointing northeast, which is the direction from the park to the heart of Lincoln, and wraps on each basket feature local street names, paying homage to the neighborhood and the denizens that made the course happen.
Since the course was installed, Fleege and the LFDC have received nearly universallly positive feedback from the neighborhood and surrounding area.
"When residents are included early in the process and shown the safety measures in place – as well as the course's minimal environmental impact – it helps build trust and sets the stage for the course to have a genuinely positive impact on the community," said Fleege.
Existing since 1990, the LFDC's main goal is to create a sustainable future for disc golf in the Lincoln community, from big-scale offerings like Beal Slough to small gems like Bethany Beginners. They're well aware that quick disc golf options ensure the game sees continued growth both by reaching the untapped market of new players and providing new outlets to established players, sentiments we've seen reflected in Germany and Canada.
Bethany Beginners is open from 5 a.m to 11 p.m. and is so well-lit ht play is possible even during the darkest winter evenings. The park is also only a few steps from the MoPac Trail, a 22-mile/35-kilometer bike and walking trail that runs from Lincoln to Wabash, making the course easily accessible from much of the city.
