Above: From l-r: David “Chez” Sanchez, Shemik Thompson, Brad Owens, Cameron Thompson (in Eagles shirt) and Edwin Hess help install the Chez-designed signage throughout the course. Photo by Jet Phynx.
By Ken Mammarella
The new Discovery Disc Golf Course in Wilmington’s Canby Park is Delaware’s “only one designed for ease of play and beginners,” designer Brad Owens says. And it’s “a big hit with the older folks as well,” practicing their approach shots and putts or enjoying the nine-hole course.
Owens sees even more benefits. Improvements underway in Canby Park and the need for course maintenance are strengthening bonds among residents in the adjacent Bayard Square neighborhood.
“Disc golf increases positive foot traffic and ownership of the space,” he adds, potentially reducing the appeal of the park for “the homeless, drug use, and unpleasantness in the woods.”
The course showcases five smile-inducing and helpful robots by Chez, the artist who under his full name (David Sanchez) owns Spaceboy Clothing on Market Street. One robot, for instance, urges players to keep the park clean, another urges passersby to watch out for flying discs.
The course, which opened this spring, has nine holes that can be played in an hour or so. Short and long tees make for a second yet different round — the holes run 120 to 310 feet — if golfers want to enjoy 18 holes in one spot. A website is under construction: Discoverdgc.org.
Owens and Mayor John Carney pose during the mayor’s tour. “He knows how to play,” Owens says. Photo by Brad Owens.
At 43.5 acres, Canby Park is Wilmington’s second-largest park. Owens nicknames it “the left lung of Wilmington” for being an important swath of greenery in Delaware’s largest city.
The new course has a “super environmental focus,” he says, and that includes turning fallen trees into benches, mulch and a curved “dead hedge” around the seventh hole. A dead hedge is a fence created from old branches and twigs, forming a beneficial “bug hotel,” he says, and a challenge for golfers. A gnarled tree near the second hole has become a personal, almost-sacred space for him to meditate and “feel and smell nature and hear the city.”
The course came about because Owens, who moved to Bayard Square in 2020, stepped up to lead the Bayard Square Neighborhood Association, which Kevin Kelley had formed in the 1980s but which later fizzled out. The association posts regularly on Instagram.
“In 2023, we began pushing for Canby Park improvements (although it’s been on the wish list for over a decade),” Owens says. “I coordinated a park planning committee and conducted the neighborhood survey in November 2023.”
Project partners from the Delaware Center of Horticulture help plant a native rain garden. Photo by Brad Owens.
More recreational opportunities for young people topped that survey, which drew 400 responses. “I submitted my proposal for the course in February 2024. The course project — from proposal to fundraising to installation — has taken about 18 months.”
Owens brought some key attributes to the projects. He is an attorney trained in nonprofit law. He is well-connected to government and nonprofit leaders after 15 years of working with both, including his new job as director of Delaware’s Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission. And, following a basketball injury, he chose to learn disc golf as an activity that is less intensive.
The work involved multiple partners. The Delaware Center for Horticulture consulted on eco-improvements, and people from the nonprofit’s Branches to Chances (a horticultural job training program for the unemployed, underemployed or previously incarcerated) installed a rain garden. The Delaware Department of Correction made picnic tables and a disc return station. The Bayard Square Neighborhood Association formed the Canby Park Disc Golf Club, which is managing the new course and an 18-hole course (built in 2011 in the western section of the park) in partnership with the city.
The $1.5 million park upgrade is due to be finished by 2026. According to Melody F. Phillips, acting director of the city parks and recreation department, they include:
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Owens drives from a tee at the new course. Photo by Jet Phynx.
New walking oval and pathways lined with park benches, decorative lighting, trees and flowering native shrubs
- Two new playgrounds for children of all ages
- A new water spray play feature for summer activities
- A new “state of the art” dog park for both small and larger pets, where the tennis courts now are
- A new picnic grove
- Improved storm water management features, with new rain gardens & vegetated bio-retention areas
- Renovated parking areas, including a new circle drive to facilitate accessibility throughout the park
The park work is funded by $1 million in the state Bond Bill and $500,000 from the Delaware Department of Transportation Community Transportation Fund, via former state Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker.
The course cost $60,000, and funders include former state Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, Rep. Josue Ortega and Wilmington council members Yolanda McCoy, Maria Cabrera, Latisha Bracy, Chris Johnson and James Spadola.
“Without the city’s partnership, we could not have succeeded,” Owens adds.
So, how does the course play?
Christian Wilson, a 2025 William Penn High School grad and aspiring pro disc golfer, praised it. “You don’t have to travel a million miles for a round,” he says, before he started two rounds.
So did Frank Ellison, a disc golfer since 1985. “The Discovery course is an amazing addition,” he says. “It’s set up perfectly. I can play it, and I can take my 5-year-old son. It makes you really think about your shot selection. It’s the perfect course to practice on, if you’re a pro, with its obstacles and challenges. And it’s fun.”
