Lisa Sheridan, Charlie and Honey in Anna Jean Cummings Park. Photo by Chip Scheuer
Fabiano Hale, a student at Soquel High School, has had a dream ever since founding his school’s disc golf club as a freshman four years ago. Hale and Spanish teacher Luke Dahlen, the club’s faculty adviser, say they used to gaze out at the rolling hills through the window of Dahlen’s classroom and imagine the possibilities for the county park neighboring the school.
“We could see that hill at Anna Jean Cummings [Park] and we’d say, ‘Wow, that would make a great disc golf course,’” Dahlen says, looking out the same window at a drizzling, overcast sky. “We just talked about it back in those days.
In April, club members hope to give Santa Cruz County Parks and Recreation their proposal for a 9-hole disc golf course—a plan that’s been raising eyebrows around the neighborhood.
Dahlen says the sport, which consists of throwing plastic 1/3-pound discs at metal baskets, is good exercise, appropriate for all ages and low-cost once you buy the equipment. Four other schools around the county—Aptos High, Harbor High, Scotts Valley High and San Lorenzo Valley High—have courses on or near campus.
Not everyone is on board with the proposed course, though. Lisa Sheridan, a Soquel resident who has been walking her dogs at Anna Jean Cummings for more than 10 years, prefers the park and its trails the way the way they are: quiet.
On a morning walk with her 10-year-old golden retriever Honey and her 4-year-old sweater-clad Dachshund Charlie, Sheridan points out every dew-filled spider web along the stroll. The natural habitat here might be at risk, she says. And she’s worried about the safety of the park’s hikers, saying dog-walking and disc golf don’t go together.
“They’re not compatible,” Sheridan says. “One’s an active sport and the other’s a passive sport. But also it wouldn’t quite be the same place. I’d hear chains clinking and people chatting.”
Sheridan helped circulate a petition against “flying projectiles” at Anna Jean Cummings, also known as Blue Ball Park because of the enormous sky blue orbs that guard its entrance. She and other environmentalists have also submitted a separate proposal to Parks and Rec that would create park signage, install a map and require parkgoers to stay on the trails. If approved, it would probably make future developments, like a disc golf course, impossible.
Dahlen and Hale say supporters and opponents are simply looking at the same green hill and seeing different possibilities. “We truly do understand their side, their point of views, their interest, their passion,” says Dahlen. “Our passion is [disc golf] and we hope to share the area.”
Par for the Course
The course has a high-profile champion in Nate Doss, a Soquel High graduate and the world’s reigning disc golf champion. Doss has already raised some money for the club that could be spent on the course. It also has the blessing of Soquel High PE teacher Stu Walters.
But retired Soquel High biology teacher John Shower isn’t crazy about the idea. He used to take students on walks through Anna Jean Cummings and even calls the park a “classroom.” Shower, who has spent time at disc golf courses like the one at De Laveaga, worries a new course would harm the home of foxes, owls, kites and red-tailed hawks, an aspect he thinks course proponents are ignoring.
“They’re being naïve if they think you can have the what’s there now and not have erosion and environmental degradation. The environment that’s there now would be history,” Shower says.
Shower says the park, formerly O’Neill Ranch, has undergone plenty of change since 2001, when the county cleared some meadows to make room for soccer and baseball fields. Before that the park was the site of a decades-long proposed development that Sheridan and others fought off—part of why activists feel like they have so much stake in the space.
Doss, who tied for third at 17 under par in a Texas tournament last weekend, says environmentalists have a point. But, he adds, a course can also provide benefits for the community and encourage people to enjoy the outdoors.
“Certainly disc golf isn’t ‘no impact.’ It’s ‘low impact,’” Doss says. “I think there’s a way for the community to use it and still be very environmentally friendly.”
