Colorado Disc Sports History Part 2

Fred Morrison's famous marketing photo with the early Pluto Platter Frisbee.

NATIONAL EVENTS

It was the AFDO in Rochester, NY that inspired some of Colorado's earliest events and disc golf course developement. In the year, a little later in the Summer, Wham-O held its first World Frisbee Championships in Pasadena, CA. The finals took place in the Rose Bowl. Actress Tatum O'Neil is seen above at the 1974 Rose Bowl with inventor Fred Morrison (From the book "Flat Flip Flies Straight". Tatum was about to win an Oscar for her role in Paper Moon. The disc on the right is from Gary Seubert's Frisbee Collection with Tatum's signature from the 1974 Rose Bowl Event.

 1975 CU BOULDER CAMPUS

As Geoff Hungerford tells it, He was in engineering at Colorado University in Boulder when the program council director ask him to design a Frisbee Golf Course on campus. Geoff had just returned from the American Flying Disc Open (AFDO) held in Rochester, NY in the Summer of '74. Jim Palmeri's AFDO tournament was ground breaking. It featured on of the first ever Disc Golf events along with some more traditional Frisbee events like East Coast Trick Catch, Accuracy, Distance and Maximum Time Aloft. As was the case in the early days of disc sports the winner was the individual that scored best overall. This particular event in 1974 gave away a car for the winner. Dan "Stork" Roddick won the overall and the car. Jim is still making payments on the car : ).

In any case it was with that inspiration that Geoff Hungerford returned to Colorado and CU and helped develop the first disc golf course on the campus. Above you'll see the original flyer and program from the 1975 disc event held on the CU Campus in Boulder.

 1977 & 1978 BeeFling in Greeley