Travis member travels U.S. for love of sport

  • Published
  • By Nick DeCicco
  • 60th Air Mobility Wing Office of Public Affairs
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Tech. Sgt. Larry Kirk has gone a long way to demonstrate his love of disc golf. 

His car's odometer can prove it. 

Sergeant Kirk has put thousands of miles on his vehicle, traversing the nation's highways in pursuit of Frisbee golf courses. 

His big goal still looms, but he's more than four-fifths of the way there: Playing the game in all 50 states. 

A cop augmentee with Travis' 60th Security Forces and a member of the Army National Guard, Sergeant Kirk has played the game off and on for nearly 35 years. 

The sergeant played golf -- "ball golf," as he refers to it -- beginning in his sophomore year of high school. As a teen, a course was down the street from his home and it was free to play. 

Throughout the next 20 years, he played whenever he had a chance at the nation's Air Force bases and especially when he made visits home to Southern California. 

While his playing slowed in the 1990s, he began making up for it earlier this decade. 

With his daughter on a traveling softball team, the family made a trip to Stockton in support of her squad. Between games, he and his boys -- then 11 and 13 -- were fishing near the city's Oak Grove Park when they noticed a few guys pulling frisbee out of the water. They asked to join in the task. 

"Once my boys saw these discs coming up with different dragons or eagles or whatever was on the face of it, they were like, 'Oh! Can we play now?'," he said. 

The Kirks took to the sport, blanketing the Western states, especially California. 

Next, Sergeant Kirk worked as a cop augmentee when he was at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska. Due to its central location in the United States, he was able to tackle many states, taking trips all the way to the Eastern seaboard. 

The sergeant's adventures are numerous. On a trip to Des Moines, Iowa, Sergeant Kirk attempted to play nine courses in one day. Although he admits he didn't finish one course -- "I couldn't follow it," he admits -- and had to stop the last round on account of darkness, he does proudly state he reached every course he intended. 

"I beg to think anybody could do that, but I did it just because it was there," he said.
The sergeant proudly unfurled a map, with splashes of red ink covering the nation's highways marking his travels, particularly from his time at Offut. 

Right now, he's planning to cross off the nine remaining states -- Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine -- during a road trip next summer. 

As far playing in the area, at Travis' course, which is behind the softball fields just west of Bldg. 381, the wind is a tremendous factor. 

"When you get your disc up into the air, you can say goodbye to the original path you think it's going to take," he said. "A slight turn to right or left and it will just soar." 

Sergeant Kirk said anyone interested in the game can ask him, or visit the Fitness Center, which will loan discs to those interested in playing.