THE REAL DEAL by aaron vidal
(page 46) OCTOBER 2014
Name: Les McLarty Age: 36 Hometown: Sioux Falls, SD Specialty: Disc Golf Enthusiast/Course Designer
We’ve designed it so that it’s played at a higher level than any of the other courses around here. People are gonna want to travel there and play. It’s a challenging and fun course that’s not going to punish new players.
LES MCLARTY A long-time recreational disc golf player, Les McLarty – a local father and a line-service technician by day – has slowly grown frustrated with the lack of courses available in Sioux Falls. Luckily for local fans of the sport, McLarty has taken his passion to the next step, designing and establishing courses in the area that he hopes veterans and newcomers alike will enjoy. The first of these is at Inspiration Hills, in nearby Inwood, Iowa. McLarty spoke with us about the venue’s grand opening – slated for October 11 – and his hopes for the future of the local disc golf community: When did you first get into disc golf, and what drew you to the sport? It was during the summer of 2000, right before we got a course in town [here in Sioux Falls.] I just got into it with some friends – we were hanging out one day and they were talking about going disc golfing. I had never heard of it, so I decided to go out with them. We went over to McKennan Park, and we’d just play [by trying to throw the disc] to objects. I kind of thought it was cool – I enjoyed it. But what really hooked me was the first time I actually saw somebody who really knew how to throw a disc and throw it really far. Watching the flight of it just got me hooked. And what led to an interest in designing courses? The guys I was playing with had been exposed to disc golf courses in other states. They’d come to South Dakota, and there were no courses in Sioux Falls, so we’d just go to a park, make up a course, play in the trees or whatever… Whenever I’d travel, I’d always try to find new courses to play. But, right now we have one course in Sioux Falls, at Tuthill Park. Just seeing the traffic it gets with all the peo-
ple, it can be very crowded. I like to take my time and enjoy the game, take my kids out. So when there are five to 10 people at each hole throwing into us while we’re still trying to finish out the hole, it’s been getting kind of frustrating. We’ve needed more courses in the area for a while. So your kids play too? I have two boys. They’re 5 and 7, and they both play. Any time I’m going out, they usually want to come with. We have a basket in our backyard, and we’ll just sit around playing – they really enjoy it. Describe the process to try and establish some new courses in the area. Have there been any obstacles? Any time somebody went in front of the Sioux Falls City Council, they’d usually get shut down. So last year, out of frustration – I was seeing the sport grow, but there were no courses to sustain it – I put together a letter with a bunch of information and demographics about the sport and sent it to the mayor. He put me in contact with the parks, and that’s how I became involved. A lot of new courses are starting to be developed outside of cities in more rural areas and state parks where there is the space and land to accommodate the sport. That is how the Inspiration Hills project came in to play. How has the course at Inspiration Hills been coming along? I’ve been going out there for about a year now, working on design and going back and forth with [the owners of the