Over the River and Through the Woods to River Run Disc Golf We Go

By: Kelley White

As co-creator of the River Run Disc Golf course in Genoa, Chuck Whitmer realizes the success of his family’s dream coming to fruition with the new, sporty addition of a disc golf course nestled in Carroll Park. His passion for the game started a year and half ago.

“I kind of got very addicted to disc golf and I played a lot around the Genoa area as there’s a good course in Kirkland that has been there for quite a while,” says Whitmer. “Once I was really into it, I thought it would be a good idea to create one in Genoa.”

Whitmer’s brother-in-law, Brian Wallace, helped facilitate the process of creating the course. “He’s very involved with the community and very involved with Genoa as a business owner, and he puts on the Volksfest every year,” says Whitmer. “We have a lot of connections with the city, and he got things rolling with the Genoa Public Works. Basically, he and I and my other brother-in-law, Kevin, started coming up with an idea for a course, trying a few different areas in Genoa that we thought might work and ending up choosing Carroll Park as the best option.”

The first step was to design and plan a course that would complement the naturally beautiful parkway. “We spent a few months walking out and trying to design and plan a good layout for the course,” says Whitmer. “Brian got things going with Public Works and they got to work clearing some of the woods out because it’s a pretty wooded area. I ordered the baskets from a topline disc golf company, and Brian was able to get the Kishwaukee Valley Wanderers to kind of foot the bill for that.”

River Run was a family affair involving both of Chuck’s brothers-inlaw as well as his sister in the entire planning process. “I designed it with Brian, who’s married to my sister Juli,” says Whitmer. “My sister Laurie, her husband Kevin and my nephew Zach went and walked around the course a lot and decided how long we wanted to make the holes, where the tees would be and where the baskets would be – kind of the flow of the course. We came up with a basic layout and then we guessed at where we wanted the baskets. Then, we drove some stakes in the ground for the public works guys and they did all of that work.”

Overall, the project took less than a year to complete, an incredibly rare feat in the disc golf world. “We got the idea rolling last January and it sounded like it was going to be possible, so during the winter, we started doing some random walkthroughs and Brian got a hold of someone with some design experience – he was very helpful,” says Whitmer. “By spring, Brian had gotten approval from the Kishwaukee Valley Wanderers and I ordered the baskets in February.”

Genoa Public Works played a huge role in the speedy installation of the disc golf course. “Once the baskets were here and the layout was done, the Public Works went out and did an amazing job of clearing woods and carving out what we wanted,” says Whitmer. “By early August, they had it pretty cleared out and they began to install the basics.”

Whitmer then registered the course on an app called UDisc. “It’s a very popular app to keep track of your golf scores and it just uses a GPS to show you courses in your area,” says Whitmer. “I laid out the course in UDisc and that’s when I became the official course administrator, or course ambassador, and ever since, the participation has been great.”

The Course itself is gorgeous and shows off some of the best characteristics of David Carroll Memorial Citizens Park. “You pull right into a very small parking lot at the entrance of Carroll Park, and if you go a little bit down the bike path off of that parking lot, you’ll see a sign for tee 1 that we designed so you were meant to tee off from the path, flowing directly to the river, due west,” says Whitmer. “That hole is 283 feet from the path to the basket and the basket is probably just 50-60 feet from the river. It’s basically woods that are cleared from the fairway and not very wide.”

Walking about thirty feet from the dirt path off of tee 1, golfers will see a sign for the second tee. “That flows directly the opposite way, alongside the other hole,” says Whitmer. “It’s our shortest hole at 156 feet, but it’s a little more wooded. Next to that tee, heading south, is our third hole which is 231 feet but there’s a few guardian trees that are closer to the baskets.”

Moving on, golfers will find themselves at the bike path where the bridge goes over the Kishwaukee River. “You’re throwing toward the river, alongside it, then you go back to the bike path and that’s where tee 4 is,” says Whitmer. “That basket is 239 feet.”

In their design, the group tried to keep as many open areas in their course as possible to encourage putting, though one hole is almost completely an open landscape. “You head back into the woods for hole five, which is 159 feet, and then there’s a path through the woods to come out into pretty much the only wideopen clear hole on the course,” says Whitmer. “It’s very wooded on the right and wide open on the left, and there’s a retention pond there. You have to throw right along the retention pond and that basket is also pretty close to the woods. That’s our longest hole at 320 feet.”

After the lengthy drive, golfers will walk across the retention pond and over a road that leads into a nearby neighborhood. “You turn around and start throwing north and that’s a very wide-open shot,” says Whitmer. “That one is fully guarded by woods and the hole, tee 7, is about a 300-foot throw.”

The woods throughout Carroll Park surround, compliment and flow around the last baskets on the course. “At the very end, it goes back into the woods and the basket is nestled among the trees for hole 8, a short 190-footer,” says Whitmer. “Then you’re back out to the bike path, near the bridge and not far from the tee for hole 4. Now you’re swinging right back toward the parking lot for hole 9 at 300 feet. You have to throw around the woods to get to it.”

Disc Golf is a family friendly, fun, and cheap activity that encourages beautiful walks among nature while tempting a little competition with friends and loved ones. “If you can buy a tendollar disc, you can go play,” Whitmer concludes.

The NECA/IBEW Local 196 Safety and Education Training Center is thriving in the Genoa Community. Business Manager and Financial Secretary Derek Luetgert has watched the organization grow from the ground up to where it is today, a successful and effective training center many large companies and customers rely on.

“NECA is the National Electric Contractor’s Association that represents all our contractors,” says Luetgert. “The entire NECA/ IBEW organization was built to provide training for our members.” Years ago, local contractors took the initiative to drive training and provide equipment for the tradesmen which allowed NECA to focus on creating a more consistent regimen all contractors could be a part of.

“It’s fully evolved to where the long-term goal and the purpose of the trust is to basically train anyone working within the jurisdiction of the IBEW Local 196, which is 14 counties in Northern Illinois, and anyone who has contributions made on their behalf through working here is eligible to take the training,” says Luetgert. “The very simple goal is to continue to provide the best skilled trade workforce that is not only safe, but productive for our contractors. Our customers include ComEd and many others such as At&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.”

IBEW provides training at multiple levels, helping workers learn how to do their oftentimes dangerous jobs safely and efficiently. “We do training on things like learning how to climb poles, run equipment, and unloading/loading equipment,” says Luetgert. “They are learning any of the ways we do our work, whether it’s running powerlines or installing them underground, working in manholes, installing equipment – any of those kinds of things.”

But highly detailed, high-stakes training is not without its challenges.