On a Saturday morning at Freedom Park, the softball diamonds are usually the first thing you notice. Twelve regulation fields worth of cleats on dirt, a concession stand doing steady business, and somewhere in the mix a Miracle League game underway on the rubberized field built specifically so kids of every ability can play. It is the kind of scene that has made this park, on the edge of Bemiss just off Guest Road, the place most residents picture when they think about weekend mornings here.
What most of them are not picturing is the tree line past the outfield fences. Walk that direction on almost any given Saturday and you will find a different kind of gathering entirely, one that has quietly turned this same 250-plus-acre park into a stop on a national tour.
The Course Behind the Diamonds
Freedom Park's disc golf course runs through mostly wooded terrain behind the ballfields, and if you have ever wondered why one source calls it an 18-hole course, another says 20, and a course-tracking app counts 27, the answer is not sloppy record-keeping. The layout uses red, white, and blue tee pads on many holes, letting players choose a shorter or longer route depending on skill level. Count only the reds and you get one number. Count every color combination and you get another. It is the same design logic golf courses use with multiple tee boxes, just applied to a sport most Bemiss residents have never watched closely.
UDisc, the app most competitive players use to track courses and rounds, rates Freedom Park 4.2 out of 5 stars across more than 1,075 community reviews, calling it a very good course by the sport's own benchmarks. A typical round takes about an hour and covers close to 1.8 miles through the wooded holes. It is also free to play, no fee, no reservation, which is part of why a local group, the Valdosta Disc Golf Association, plays there weekly on top of whatever tournament happens to be scheduled that day.
Those tournaments are where the story stops being a neighborhood curiosity and starts looking like something else.
A 2026 Calendar Built for Traveling Players
Freedom Park is not hosting one disc golf event a year. It is running a full competitive calendar that stretches from early spring through late October, sanctioned by the Professional Disc Golf Association and, in one case, tied to a national amateur tour.
| Date | Event | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| March 1, 2026 | NADGT Flex at Freedom Park | Part of the National Amateur Disc Golf Tour's flex series |
| March 28, 2026 | FTA Gyro Open | Hosted by FTA Disc Golf, one round of 18 holes |
| April 25, 2026 | Freedom Open Presented by Innova | PDGA-sanctioned, hosted by the Valdosta Disc Golf Association |
| July 18, 2026 | Freedom Summer Flex | PDGA Flex C-tier |
| August 1, 2026 | MVP Circuit Challenge at Freedom Park | Single-day event |
| October 24-25, 2026 | 16th Annual Valdosta Open | PDGA B-tier, sponsored by MVP Disc Sports |
Six sanctioned events in eight months is a heavier schedule than most municipal parks in South Georgia carry for any single sport. The October event carries particular weight in the disc golf world. A PDGA B-tier designation sits above the more common C-tier local events, which typically means a higher entry fee, a deeper competitive field, and a bigger draw from outside the immediate area. Past editions of the Valdosta Open have carried added cash purses reaching into the thousands of dollars, the kind of prize pool that pulls serious players away from courses closer to home.
Where the Players Are Actually Driving From
The April Freedom Open field is the clearest evidence that this is not just a hometown event with a fancy name. Competitors that weekend included Zack Kitchen out of Tampa, Alan Schutte from High Springs, Florida, Michael Johnson traveling up from Ocala, and Erick Hollander coming from Jacksonville. Local names filled out the card too, Andy Ragsdale from Valdosta and Grant Folsom from Adel, along with Ray City amateur Ransom Weidner. Round 1 was played on the course's blue layout, 18 holes at par 59 stretching just over 7,500 feet.
That means on an ordinary spring Saturday, a course most Bemiss residents drive past without a second look was hosting professional players who had crossed state lines to play it. The tournament's sponsor list included Salt Lick Sausage among a roster of local and disc golf industry backers, the kind of lineup that looks more like something you'd expect near a bigger metro area than a wooded course behind a softball complex.
One Park, Two Reputations
None of this displaces what Freedom Park has always been to this community. VLPRA, the parks authority that operates the facility, still describes the Miracle Field Complex as the crown jewel of its entire system. The field itself opened in 2019 through a public-private partnership between VLPRA and the Miracle League of Valdosta, built with fully accessible dugouts, a fully accessible pavilion, and a boundless playground designed so kids of every ability can play together. VLPRA's own materials describe it as the nation's largest Miracle Field, a distinction that has nothing to do with disc golf and everything to do with why so many Bemiss families already consider this their park.
Add the dog park, the paved walking track, the cross-country running course, and the fact that Freedom Park hosts the regional Spring Olympics every year alongside dozens of baseball and softball tournaments, and you start to see a facility that was never built around any single use. The disc golf course simply grew up in the same footprint, largely unnoticed by anyone not already carrying a bag of discs.
What This Actually Changes on a Saturday
For someone who has lived near this park for years, the practical shift is small but real. The parking lot filling up on a random weekend no longer necessarily means a softball tournament. It might mean the Freedom Open is running its second round, or that a national amateur tour flex event has quietly rolled through town. Walking the dog on the track might put you within earshot of a tournament announcer instead of a Little League coach. None of it requires planning around, since the disc golf course stays open to casual play even during sanctioned events on other sections of the layout, but it is worth knowing what you might stumble into.
Bemiss residents who have never picked up a disc are living a short drive from a course good enough that players fly in from Florida to compete on it. That is not a fact most people would guess standing in the Freedom Park parking lot on a Tuesday evening, watching softball warmups and nothing else. It is exactly the kind of thing you only learn by paying attention to a place you already thought you knew.
If you're building a life in Bemiss, or thinking about what a neighborhood like this actually offers day to day, Rachelle Anderson would love to talk through it with you. Let's Connect.
