Phillips Park Disc Golf Course

Phillips Park's 9-hole course in Pittsburgh's Carrick neighborhood is a genuinely student-built course: Carrick High School teachers Dan Tyger, Russ Peters, Larry Jackson and J. Gary Dropcho worked with students from the school's Frisbee Club to design it, get it approved, and install the baskets in May 1996, with Pittsburgh Public Works providing tools and access to the land. A Carrick student, Jim O'Mara, added concrete tee pads in 2000 as an Eagle Scout project, and volunteers refreshed the baskets with new Innova DISCatchers in 2011. The course plays to a par of 27, with two pin positions on every hole — natural red tees and concrete white tees.

The layout climbs a hillside of mature hardwood trees, and the Pittsburgh Flying Disc Society describes the fairways as generous rather than tight, with out-of-bounds running along the park's edges; the first tee sits at the top of the park, up a set of stairs from Parkfield Street. It's free to play. Phillips Park itself has a longer history than the course does — the city bought the land in 1904 for what had been a trolley-line amusement park — and today it also houses the Phillips Recreation Center, with a playground and free parking alongside the disc golf course.