News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Jared and Byron Leisek dove into the pond at Sisters High School to retrieve lost disc golf discs.
Sisters' disc golf course has one heck of a water trap.
It's not a designed part of the course, which is located near SOAR on land belonging to the Sisters School District. It's a half-acre fenced irrigation holding pond for Sisters High School.
Dozens of errant discs plunge into the pond - but they're not lost forever.
Byron and Jared Leisek are avid disc golf players - and certified SCUBA divers. Disc golf impresario Kathy Kemper-Green met Byron at lunch one day and discovered his interest in disc golf and in diving and a plan was formed.
Kemper-Green got permission for Leisek to dive in the pond and recover lost discs.
If a disc has a name and a phone number on it, Kemper-Green returns them to their rightful owners. If they don't, she donates them to Sisters Elementary School. She cleans and "de-stinks" the discs at home in a bathtub.
Last Tuesday, the brothers hit the pond for a diving session that recovered 23 discs. Kemper-Green told The Nugget that grass on the pond bottom potentially obscured many discs. The brothers will head back when the grass dies.
Their record haul in a previous dive was 42 discs.
Jared, who lives in Redmond, took up diving at the behest of his wife and father-in-law. They took a class, but the information about the physical dangers of diving turned his wife off to the endeavor. Jared stuck with it and his brother Byron took it up, too.
Diving came into Byron Leisek's life at an opportune moment. He was recovering from a terrible accident that nearly severed his foot and he was struggling with his limited mobility.
"Physically and mentally (the injury) was pretty tough for me," he said. "SCUBA diving was so good for me mentally because as soon as I got in the water, there was no limping. I was 100 percent normal."
Leisck and his brother participate in cleanup dives on the Deschutes River, and dive recreationally. Finding discs is a nice excuse to work underwater.
"I like the treasure hunt aspect of it," Byron said. "They're hard to see down there, there's a lot of silt."
Jared once recovered a woman's purse from the Sisters pond. The purse had been stolen about four years before in a shoplifting incident. The thief apparently threw it into the pond.
"I opened it up and there's ID in there, a checkbook with a phone number in it," he said.
He returned the purse to its rightful owner, who at least got her curiosity about what had happened to it satisfied.
"I got a good chuckle out of that one," Jared said.
Kemper-Green said that disc golfers really appreciate having their discs recovered. At $12 to $20 apiece (some out-of-production favorites can run up to $50), it's a pleasant surprise to get a lost disc back from the depths.
The brothers get nothing for their efforts beyond the enjoyment of diving and a sense of accomplishment from digging up their buried treasure.
"I'll probably take them out for a drink sometime, but other than that, they're in it for the love of the game," said Kemper-Green.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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