MORGANTOWN — Met with spring day, the Morgantown Mountain Goats, a local disc golf club, and Mountain Stewardship and Outdoor Leadership School (Mountain SOL) came together for their fourth annual Giving Goat Tournament at Dorsey’s Knob.
The brain child of Jen-Osha Buysse, and with the help of Elizabeth Wiles and Hannah Spencer, Mountain SOL brings kids together to learn as well as get outdoors. Buysse said Mountain SOL holds five after school programs and also in school programs offering outdoor education.
“The short way of explaining that is if you’re in first grade you need to learn how to use a ruler,” she said.
“You can learn how to use a ruler with worksheets in class or I can take you outside and show you the difference between a doe and a buck and a yearling deer track and give you a ruler show you how to use it and then we go off tracking deer.”
Money from the tournament goes toward a scholarship program for Mountain SOL, making sure that every child who wants to participate can. Buysse said the program hosts around 130 kids manned by mostly volunteers.
Nick Buysse, who is Jen-Osha’s husband, is with the Morgantown Mountain Goats. The family holds a love for being outsides and both their sons play disc golf.
“It’s the two passions in our family. Mountain SOL and being outside, and disc golf and being outside, they go together very well,” she said.
Nick said a lot of the participants Saturday were first time disc golfers. He said between the 66 players half were newcomers and 15 were first time players ever.
“I’d say over half of our people here today are kids so that’s the focus of the tournament, to introduce kids to disc golf and of course raise money for Mountain SOL,” said Nick.
Nick said on behalf of the Mountain Goats, they were thrilled to provide the fundraising opportunity to Mountain SOL and provide kids with scholarships.
“Get them out in the woods to learn more stuff outside and hopefully one day be a professional disc golfer, that’s one of the extra perks about it for me,” he said.
Hannah Spencer said she loves being outside with the kids, and disc golf is just another way to do that. Spencer said since its inception five years ago it is pretty amazing to see what Mountain SOL has become.
“It’s just kind of taken on a speed of its own and it’s pretty amazing how rapidly things have been taking off here in the past two years. We just got our own building two summers ago and we’ve already outgrown it,” she said.
