| night-time guide for playing disc games after dark |
| Safety First... |
| Know your playing area!!! |
| First and foremost you have to know what the field conditions are before you just go lumbering out for a blind run in the park, field or open space. Play in a location where you know that there are no holes, fences, sprinkler heads or unmarked obstacles that are going to seriously injure yourself or another. |
| The Basics |
| Throw and Catch |
A good round of throw and catch in the evening is an awesome way to wind down. - The darker the field or open space location the better in our opinion. Anywhere at night will do but the less light pollution from your surroundings, the more enjoyable and bright the Flashflight will show up.
Use our Taillight. These little "halo" of lights are built to see who you are throwing to. They cast a very small ring of light so you can see where the person is without effecting your vision. |
| Frickets |
| Love this game! |
[1] - Use our Taillights with zip-ties and stretch the Taillight down the rods you use for wickets with the light source at the top. The cup goes over the light source and glows great. Leave an inch at the top so you can pound the wicket in the ground without damaging the Taillight.
[2] - Play on. |
| Disc Croquet |
| Requires some additional parts... |
[1] - We used 1/2" PVC pipe, 5'-6' lengths. Lightly heat the middle three feet with a blow torch. Do not melt, simply heat so you can bend the PVC around a trash can to create a horseshoe shaped croquet wicket.
[2] - Use the Taillight and zip-tie method as mentioned in Frickets to stretch along the PVC. We used two Taillights per wicket with the light source 6" from the bottom of each side of the wicket. Cut, shave a tapered end on both sides so you can press the ends into the grass. Do this to 9 wickets. We used red Taillights for the wickets because the battery life is much longer.
[3] - Lay out a typical croquet field but stretch it to 60-70-80 yards.
[4] - Croquet rules apply. Use rollers if you want. If your disc rolls over another disc, you either send them (leaving your disc where it stopped) or go back to where you rolled over them and take your free throw. |
| Back Roads Disc Golf |
| We've played some pretty serious "late-night back-roads disc golf" |
[1] - You are going to trash your disc if you take our suggestions. We've got road discs and grass discs, use the road disc. If you play in the street, there are cars. Watch out for cars!
[2] - We play on the back roads NOT the main streets. We choose the hole by looking far down the street and selecting something around a street light; like a fire hydrant, for sale sign or the light post itself.
[3] - Use the road as your fairway and try to stay on the road.
[4] - Be quiet. If you are really loud and it's late, someone is going to call the authorities and your game will get cut short.
[5] - We shouldn't have to say this but we know some of our audience. Keep any open containers concealed. |
| Night Ultimate |
[We do not promote the game of night ultimate!]
It's a lot of fun... but it can be DANGEROUS! - We've got a number of suggestions for keeping the game safer. |
[1] - Know your playing surface really well and mark all hazards with our competitors disc (ha!), another disc or a LED clip-on marker band.
[2] - Be sure you know who you are playing with. We play ultimate with our league and local clubs. Some of our regulars go really hard and make bids on the disc that can just be dangerous play to others. Take these characters and let them loose on the field at night and you're asking for serious trouble. Call the medic in advance! - The point is, by knowing who your are playing with and having a conversation before any night game. It is a smart idea to let everyone know the pace, level of play, gender matching, etc... We've found that if everyone agrees to take a step off on defense and let the flow continue, it works well.
[3] - Light every player! Use our Taillight (this is why we created it) to determine the team color. Taillights come in Red and Green. If everyone has a Taillight on their head and have it facing the same way, everyone can see which direction the person is running and what team they are on. Lighting everyone's dome is the best alternative.
[4] - Have everyone wear really white, white shirts or upper garments. This too is really important! The whiter the better, meaning the more white the better. Reason: you can see the mass of the bodies around you. It just helps with peripheral vision on where body mass is moving around at all times.
[5] - Play on moon lit nights! The Flashflight discs glow plenty. The more moon light the more visibility you have for other players. |
| Night Ultimate [Field Preparation] |
| These are only suggestions. |
[1] - For more structured games and night tournaments, we use a port-a-field from portafield.com. This is a field lining system that is fairly simple to set up and marks a real clean straight lined field space. The sidelines really show up well when you are near the line, even in the dark.
[2] - We use solid orange cones instead of slotted cones. We poke a hole in the ground the diameter of a mini-Mag flashlight, take the lens cap entirely off the flashlight and poke them into the hole and place the cone over the half buried Mag light. We've also used the little LED micro lights. The cone is fully illuminated.
[3] - For the goal line cones we double-up the cones side by side, by putting two cones side by side in a horizontal row on the sideline. It just helps identify that's the goal line (Makes more sense when you see it at night). Makes the end zone line stand out. |
