Aidan Efaw
Over the past several years, two casual sports have taken the United States by storm, growing in popularity among college students. Disc golf, played with small, Frisbee-like discs and special goalposts, saw its first big boom during the COVID-19 pandemic as a sport to play while social distancing, and has grown by nearly 20% per year since 2020. Harding University’s club disc golf team started last fall, and after a successful first season are looking to secure further funding to continue searching for tournaments to compete in and regional colleges to play against. Harding is one of the few schools in Arkansas with teams, but the disc golf team lost their school funding due to a lack of opponents. They are still looking to travel to tournaments this year. Sophomore Carter Lee joined the team last year and enjoyed getting to know a group of new people through competing against other teams and traveling together.
“We love it, and we would love to get our funding back because we had such an amazing time in the fall,” Lee said. “And I didn’t know any of these guys before, and now they’re some of my best friends. It really made an impact on me and if we could continue that in any way it would be amazing.”
Though disc golf has grown steadily for many years, pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America. Pickleball also started growing during the pandemic, but saw an unprecedented boom in player count once social distancing orders were lifted, and has grown by over 50% for the past two years. Many members of Harding faculty have pickleball experience. Honors College dean Dr. Jim Miller and Computer Science chair Dr. Frank McCown are familiar faces in the Searcy pickleball community, playing both to stay active and for the social aspect of the strong community around the game. Dr. Miller started playing pickleball outdoors during the pandemic and has returned to playing regularly with fellow faculty members Dr. Mac Sandlin, Dr. Heath Carpenter and many of his students. Dr. Miller emphasized that pickleball is a social game at heart, and enjoys playing with the Harding and Searcy community at Berryhill Park.
“Living in the Harding family, it’s good to have outlets that are outside of Harding,” Miller said, “and so getting out there and meeting people from Searcy and striking up pickleball relationships with them is fun and cool.”
McCown started playing pickleball in college and didn’t expect it to become the hit it is today. He has enjoyed playing the game to stay active with his community. His students challenge him in class to pickleball games, so he hopes that Harding will eventually build their own courts.
“It’s a very addictive sport,” McCown said, “Once you’re out there, you don’t want to leave, like, you want to play one more game, you know, just one more. My friends and I, we all kind of joke that you have to be really disciplined and not play, make sure that you’re spending time with your family and doing other things that you need to do. But, I look forward to having more Harding students play and getting to play with them.”
