Standing Rocks Park is about to get busy. Portage County's largest park, already known for its sprawling 33-hole disc golf layout, is hosting the Great Glacial Washout V, a Professional Disc Golf Association tournament running the final weekend of September, with competition spilling across two courses and drawing both professional and amateur throwers to the Stevens Point area.
Portage County Parks Department announced that the tournament will take place over the final weekend in September, according to WAOW. The first round tees off at 9 a.m. on September 26 with play split between the Yulga course in Stevens Point and Standing Rocks Park, before the field consolidates at Standing Rocks for the tournament's finish. Online registration closes September 24, with entry fees ranging from $60 to $90, and the event wraps up around 1 p.m. on September 27 with an awards ceremony and raffle drawing at Standing Rocks Park.
The tournament includes both professional and amateur disc golfers and is open to spectators, with vendors on-site selling disc golf merchandise and equipment throughout the weekend. It's officially sanctioned on the Wisconsin Disc Golf Tour, a statewide competitive series that has run since 1993 and features a slate of B-tier and A-tier events hosted by regional clubs, according to the Wisconsin Disc Golf Tour.
A Course Built For Big Events
Standing Rocks has earned a reputation well beyond Portage County. Per UDisc, the course ranks among the top 50 disc golf venues worldwide, and it was voted Wisconsin's third finest disc golf venue. The course is considered challenging but rewarding, set against rolling hills and what the tournament's host description calls peaceful natural beauty — terrain that has made Standing Rocks a draw for some of Wisconsin's largest disc golf competitions in the Midwest.
That reputation didn't happen by accident. The Standing Rocks disc golf courses were designed starting in 1999 by Randy Schukar, who laid out an original 9-hole loop that gradually expanded across the park's ski trails into the 33 permanent holes organized into three loops that exist today, according to UDisc. Temporary tournament holes played during the annual Standing Rocks Open helped test layouts that eventually became permanent additions to the course, the same UDisc profile notes.
Fresh Upgrades Ahead of the Tournament
The timing lines up with a round of infrastructure upgrades at the park. Standing Rocks swapped every disc golf basket for DGA Mach VII targets in spring 2026 and kicked off a project converting tee pads to concrete, work completed with help from local volunteers and course designer Schukar himself, as reported by Point/Plover Metro Wire. Those improvements follow years of public investment at the 524-acre park, Portage County's largest, which also offers 14.3 miles of mountain biking trails, cross-country skiing and an off-leash dog park.
Back in 2019, Portage County and the Friends of Standing Rocks broke ground on the 2,600-square-foot Behnke Olson Outdoor Recreation Center, adding year-round shelter, 24/7 restrooms and trail access for disc golfers. The facility was named for Donn Behnke and Mike Olson, prominent local cross-country coaches, according to the same Metro Wire report. Recreational players hoping to try the course themselves outside tournament weekends need a permit, with Portage County charging $5 for a daily pass or $40 annually, fees collected online or at the park trailhead from May through November.
A Second Course, and a Regional Hub
The tournament's other host site, Yulga Disc Golf Course in the Town of Hull, offers a different experience entirely — a free-to-play, flat and wooded 18-hole layout with three concrete tee pad positions per hole ranging from 4,369 to 5,530 feet, according to the City of Stevens Point's official website. Yulga was also designed by Schukar and functions as a complementary venue to Standing Rocks, connecting directly to the Moses Creek Segment of the 30.5-mile Green Circle Trail and bordering the 33-acre Moses Creek Meadows natural area, per the Friends of Schmeeckle Reserve.
Together, the two courses help explain why UDisc ranks Stevens Point as the 7th best disc golf city in Wisconsin and 133rd nationally, with five public courses in the area — Standing Rocks, Yulga, McDill Pond, Mead Park and Bluebird Park — giving the region an unusually dense concentration of facilities. Much of the day-to-day league play and course upkeep falls to the Stevens Point Area Disc Sports Association, a volunteer organization that runs regular events including Tuesday Night Doubles at Yulga Park and channels proceeds back into facility upgrades.
With mountain bikers, hikers and cross-country skiers sharing Standing Rocks' trail network throughout the year, how the park manages foot and disc traffic during a packed tournament weekend alongside its other seasonal uses remains an open question for the local recreation community heading into the Great Glacial Washout V.
