Jake Spitzack
Staff Writer
Come May 1, colorful plastic discs will once again be whizzing through Kaposia Park and the intermittent ching of disc golf hole basket chains will echo through the trees. Kaposia Disc Golf Course is opening for its 34th season under new management and several changes are in store. The new owners and operators are Jason Wilder and Greg Barber, who founded their company, Flight Deck Disc Golf, last year. In addition to operating the pro shop and course, they will handle daily and season passes, and organize tournaments.
The first order of business after signing an operation agreement with South St. Paul Parks and Recreation in February was hauling from the parking lot the 40-foot storage unit that housed the pro shop. It has been replaced with two smaller units on the grass near the first tee, one for the pro shop and the other for equipment storage.
“We want to create a patio area up off the curb [between the containers] behind the first and third tees – which are right up against the parking lot – to try and make the course a little bit more inviting,” said Wilder. “Maybe we could have some tables and chairs, and a firepit in the fall.”
He said the course is one of the state’s most iconic so its layout won’t be tweaked much. Some brush will be removed from fairways, and new pin locations will be dug to create a “gold” layout that will be used for specialty events to challenge the most skilled players. The course features 27 holes compared to most courses’ nine or 18, and a balanced mixture of wooded and open terrain.
The pro shop will offer much the same as before: disc golf discs and bags, apparel, snacks and beverages. A season pass is $30 for South St. Paul residents and $40 for nonresidents. Daily passes are $5, and youth ages 18 and under living in South St. Paul can play for free. The first tournament at Kaposia this season is Babby’s First Tournament, held May 11.
Wilder is a two-time divisional Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) state champion and has been Minnesota’s PDGA coordinator for the last 10 years, in which time he has organized hundreds of disc golf events, including some at Kaposia. He has connections with local and touring pros and plans to occasionally bring them in for workshops and other events. Last year, Scott Stokely, a touring pro, hosted a workshop there.
A former IT employee at US Bank, Wilder founded Twin Town Events in 2018 to organize disc golf tournaments, leagues, workshops and other disc golf related events. Since then, he’s organized one of the state’s largest annual event, the 3-day Twin Town Throw Down. It’s held the third weekend in July and regularly draws more than 300 players across 11 divisions, who compete at Kaposia, Bethel University in Arden Hills, and Brookview Golf Course in Golden Valley. Wilder continues to manage that company in addition to Flight Deck, which focuses more on the retail side of the sport. His partner in Flight Deck, Greg Barber, is a casual player and co-owner of several coffee shops in Minneapolis. The two heard about the opportunity to operate the Kaposia course in November and quickly threw their company name in the hat for consideration.
“Kaposia is one of our best courses in the Twin Cities and there aren’t too many opportunities to have a disc golf pro shop on a course,” said Wilder. “To be able to come in and essentially have a turnkey retail operation in an already successful course was very appealing.”
The city and Flight Deck will split revenue from season and daily passes, and Flight Deck will retain all revenue from the pro shop. The agreement between the city and the company will renew automatically each year for five years unless one party terminates it early.
“We’re in this for the long haul,” said Wilder. “We’re planning on buying the shipping containers that we’re bringing in instead of leasing them. We will own the assets on the property with the intention of having them there long term…. We’re really excited to not only have the pro shop, but also be a part of the South St. Paul community. We’ve got some plans and ideas to reach out to local businesses for partnerships and just find ways to support other businesses in South St. Paul and be a part of the South St. Paul family.”
Wilder was introduced to the increasingly popular sport by a friend in 1998 and was immediately hooked. By 2000, he got his PDGA membership to compete in PDGA-sanctioned events and competed until 2015. After that, he began organizing tournaments and has planned as many as 30 in one season.
He is quick to tout the appeal of the sport.
“Certainly it’s great, low-intensity exercise, but when I take a stack of discs out to an open field just to have practice time, my brain closes everything out in the rest of the world,” said Wilder. “Stress, problems, anything else that’s going on in the world – there could be civil unrest 10 miles away and I wouldn’t know it because I’m just so lost in the moment of throwing discs. That, I think, is a shared experience by a lot of people that play the sport. It allows you to break away from the rest of life and just enjoy a round of disc golf.”
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