FAIRMONT – Cedar Creek Disc Golf Course is set to host its 18th Cedar Creek Open on Aug. 17 and 18.

The two-day event boasts great amenities, mini games and side events and a total of three 18-hole courses. They are expecting a disc golf family reunion style environment.

The tournament has grown exponentially, hosting an average of 200 players and reaching the PDGA A-tier, which is only one step below the top. It requires strict statkeeping and a larger prize purse and is officially a sanctioned event with the results applying to player rankings.

Starting as a C-tier tournament it has rapidly grown to reach the A-tier, the second highest ranking possible.

“I ran it as a C-tier,” said tournament organizer Trevor Boehne. “The second year, I made a pretty big jump right away from just having it be on one day and being a C-tier to the second year, I did a two-day tournament and made it a B-tier. Then I was getting some local business sponsors from restaurants and different things to add in some money to the prize purse.

“I did that as a B-tier for a couple years and then I forget, I think, two or three, and then I moved up to A-tier status which just increases the amount of additional prize pool that you have to do and just the overall professionalism of the event.”

One thing the tournament boasts is that unlike the other tournaments in larger metro areas who have more readily available amenities or the option for some players to go home after the day of play, Boehne said this brings more of a family-reunion style environment.

“Our community is fantastic, but there’s not an overwhelming urge for those players to go check out a certain thing,” he said. “So what the tournament has and what has developed over the 18 years is a lot of people have described it as sort of like a disc golf family reunion, where all these players, a lot of people know each other from the tournament scene and from playing the Cedar Creek Open before, and when they come and they finish their round, instead of scattering to a bunch of other activities or home, everybody just hangs out.”

Rather than leaving immediately after each round, many players like to stick around and catch up with old friends and take part in the many side activities the event offers.

“After the tournament rounds are over, there are still a lot of people just hanging out at the park,” Boehne said. “I make a bunch of side games, like accuracy challenges and putting competitions. People are playing bags and people are just hanging out, chatting and that is an environment that doesn’t happen at a lot of other tournaments in bigger metro areas because, like I said, there’s that many more distractions.”

Boehne has been involved with the sport and partnered up with Jon Riggs to help with construction and building the course back in 1999, stemming from a sport known as object golf.

“Prior to baskets or in areas where they either can’t put baskets or don’t want to put baskets, people in the early days were just like, ‘Alright, we’re gonna throw here to this tree over there. We’re gonna throw from here and you have to hit this mailbox or something.'” said Boehne. “Like, they would take objects and you would just go until your disc hit the object.”

This all started in Lincoln Park and planted the seed for the birth of the Cedar Creek Disc Golf Course.

“People were getting interested in playing,” said Boehne. “Jon teamed up with a long-time Minnesota fixture of disc golf by the name of Chuck Kennedy and they designed the original course in 1996.”

Now known as Cedar Creek West, the original course laid the framework for the disc golf community to gain a proper foothold in Fairmont. As time went on, Boehne started playing other tournaments with friends and discovered what the other larger courses had that Cedar Creek was missing. Reaching out to Riggs, plans for changes and expansion were put into motion.

“One of my friends and I, Adam Sternke, we started going and playing some tournaments outside of Fairmont. And when we traveled around Minnesota and Iowa and Wisconsin,” said Bohene. “We played a bunch of tournaments, kind of got some perspective on what the courses were like that bigger tournaments were being held on. The original course in Fairmont was a little bit on the shorter side.”

This led to conversations and plans for expansion. In 2006 after wandering around the park, Boehne realized that they had the space and opportunity for expansion. After reaching out to city council for approval, he funded the addition through sponsorships from local companies to make it happen.

“I put in the second course in 2006,” said Boehne. “I was like, ‘All right, 10 years later, 2016, there’s space for one more.’ I didn’t get it finished because it was way, way, way more work than the last course because of just how wooded it was.”

The course has continued to expand and now has three 18-hole courses and is one of the few courses of its size in the region. There are no plans to slow things down as the Cedar Creek Open has become a part of the PDGA Tour.