Are you looking for an underdog story? Look no further than Taylor University Disc Golf.
Analyzing this team’s improbable run is equivalent to a modern college sports fairy tale in the vein of Loyola Chicago’s run to the Final Four in 2018 and FCS Appalachian State’s toppling of No. 5 Michigan in 2007.
The club hasn’t even been around for a full year and already they are competing against, and beating, NCAA Division I schools with student bodies 30 times larger.
This entire team started with the dream of one man: Frank Smith.
The senior has been breaking new ground – literally – at Taylor this year, initiating and seeing through the creation of a disc golf course on Taylor’s campus, creating the disc golf club and continuing his role as president of the team.
Smith was introduced to the sport in 2014, and for over a decade he’s been honing his skills.
“My youth pastor … taught me how to play, and I just kind of realized I was good at it, and I think that's why I started playing–because I was good at it,” Smith said. “Then I just kind of fell in love with it on the latter side of things and just now play because it's truly a love of mine.”
Disc golf, much like other college sports, has tiers of competition ranging from Division I, II and III. However, unlike other sports, teams can rank up through the divisions mid-season. The better you perform, the higher division and competition you play.
“Whoever's won more has a higher likelihood of staying higher … there's a lot of events happening, and we're not all competing at all of the events,” Smith said. “DI, DII, DIII is just based on the skill of your team, and so DI are typically the best teams and that is DI schools, and we just happen to be good enough to play with them.”
Smith’s humility shines through as one of his attributes; his squad is more than “just good enough” to hang with bigger schools.
Taylor plays in the Great Lakes Conference with fellow NAIA schools Mount Vernon Nazarene University and Spring Arbor as well as NCAA juggernauts Ohio State and Michigan. The only teams Taylor sits behind in conference play are rivals No. 15 Michigan State, No. 16 Cincinnati and No. 19 Ferris State.
Ranked No. 23 in the nation as of March, every competition provides Division I level competition against the likes of No. 3 NC State, No. 5 Texas A&M and No. 15 Michigan State.
Disc golf has two sets of rankings: one for teams and the other for individuals.
In the individual Top 20, Smith has jumped to his highest spot of the year, No. 2 in the nation, with two wins in four events. One of his teammates, freshman Ethan Darby, claims the No. 14 spot with one event win.
Taylor is one of three schools with multiple players in the Top 20 along with Emporia State and NC State, and it has the highest Top 20 positional average out of those schools. (Taylor’s average rank is 8, Emporia's average rank is 14 and NC State's average rank is 17.5).
Darby fills the role of vice president of the team and has been playing since the summer of 2020. He first picked up the sport to give him an excuse to get out of the house, but now he sits as one of the nation’s best collegiate disc golf athletes.
“(Reaching his current peak) is really special,” Darby said. “I love competing, I'm a super competitive person, and so being able to see my name next to the Taylor Trojan mascot on the leaderboard is really special to me; it’s really fun to see.”
To be declared National Champions, Taylor will have to contend with the No. 1 Charlotte 49ers, who have won eight out of the nine events they have competed in, as well as Ilkin Groh, the No. 1 ranked player who sports the red and black of division rival No. 16 Cincinnati.
Over the season, the team has rotated members in and out of events, sometimes bringing two teams of four, sometimes just driving with four people, but the competitive and supportive nature of the team hasn’t changed.
Both Smith and Darby see the courses they play on and the events they compete in as their mission field; meeting and sharing the gospel with the opponents is just as much the goal as taking a spot on the podium.
“If I were to go out and play nationals and in my singles round or in the team's round, not throw well and not do a good job at evangelism, or if I were to go out and play well and also not do a good job at evangelizing and witnessing, what good did I do there?” Darby said. “That's something that I've been wrestling with (alongside) guys on the team … that we’re not there for ourselves. And so I think that's, that should always be the goal. That was explicitly our goal last weekend, and it's our goal in two weeks to play at Nationals.”
Smith and Darby will be leading the team along with Caleb Bell and Timothy Stone after spring break for their final tournament.
They have no head coach. They have no team bus. They have no national-media coverage following their every move.
It’s just four guys in a car glorifying God on their way to a fairy tale ending with some discs in the back seat.
“We're gonna do what we do best,” Smith said. “I think the most important thing to me though is that we go out, and we serve God. Because I know it's easy to let our mental state just blow up, and people get angry, and it's easy to kind of let go of the foundation that we have in Christ, but I would love to walk out of (Nationals) with people saying, ‘Dang that team was different. You know, that team was unique.’”
The four-headed dragon of Smith, Darby, Bell and Stone will fight for first at the College Disc Golf Championships from April 3-6 at a pro-level course at Winthrop University.
