Disc golf, that is.

There’s sure to be more on a list of sports and hobbies from high school and college soccer, varsity volleyball, and the Pennsylvania State Stone Skipping Championships.

But disc golf has to rank right up there, especially since Ferry, representing Penn State University, won the 2025 Collegiate Disc Golf National Division III Singles Championships in Rock Hill, South Carolina, earlier this month.

“Obviously, most people don’t pick up weird sports that they play at a competitive level,” said Ferry, the Warren Area High School and Penn State University graduate of State College. “They do, however, find hobbies. I’ve found a few hobbies (sports) that I enjoy enough to continue. I also am an extremely competitive person. I want to beat the person next to me, but most of all, I want to beat myself from yesterday.”

Warren’s Alex Ferry recently won the Division III 2025 Collegiate Disc Golf National Singles Championships in Rock Hill, S.C. Submitted Photo

Ferry checked all the boxes when he finished first out of 181 players at 10-under 48 in the 18-hole round.

“The hobbies I stick with are the ones I can improve at and test my skills against others,” he said. “Disc golf fits that perfectly. The skill ceiling is unfathomable and I like the people, the shapes the discs make in the air, the accessibility, and the style of competition in disc golf.

“It’s also hard to hurt oneself after achieving good throwing form in your primary method,” Ferry added, “be it forehand, backhand, or overhand. You can play disc golf well into retirement or at four years old. You can have fun your first time and your thousandth time. You can bring one disc or 50. Anyone can play disc golf and anyone can have fun doing so. I’m surprised more people don’t.

“I want to play disc golf as long as I can,” he said. “It’s a fun little game with an amazing, but still small, community. Hopefully, disc golf will become more of a mainstay in American athletics. I know there are colleges that offer scholarships for disc golf.”

Not for Ferry, who has already graduated from PSU main, “but the rules — as of this year — allow me to continue playing college disc golf for this semester,” he said.

Ferry played men’s Division III soccer at Penn State Altoona as a freshman and sophomore.

“Now, I’m searching for a job in meteorology, which is what I studied and graduated with a degree in,” said Ferry, 21, who transferred to State College for the courses he needed.

Despite graduating out of amateur college disc golf, “I will play in any spare time I have for the foreseeable future,” he said. “It would be a dream to go pro, but it’s unrealistic in a sport with so little funding and popularity. There are probably 50 to 100 people earning a living exclusively by playing disc golf. Until I have the skills and opportunity to make it in the pros, I’ll just be throwing any spending cash I have at plastic circles that fly funny.”

In all seriousness, “disc golf courses come in many shapes and sizes,” said Ferry. “You have open courses, park-style courses with some trees delineating the proper shots, but not creating a narrow fairway, and wooded courses that can bite you at any time. Throwing a disc through dense woods is not easy, by the way. I would consider my home course to be Harvest Fields Disc Golf Course in Boalsburg, Pa., but while I’m actually at home, it’s Wildcat Park in Ludlow. There are plans in the works for a course in Warren County. That will immediately be my home course when completed.

“It’s fairly common to think disc golf courses are similar to golf courses — well-maintained fields of quarter-inch tall grass,” added Ferry, the son of Brian and Casey Ferry of Warren. “They are quite the opposite. Most of the time, it’s a slightly wider hiking trail or a typical park setting. Most courses are not trimmed like ‘ball golf’ courses and extremely few are as large or as wide open. A good disc golf course can fit in under a quarter the area of a golf course.

“Your objective in disc golf is to get a disc into a basket in as few throws as possible,” he said. “You start from a ‘tee pad’ and throw. You then go to your disc and throw again until the disc comes to rest in the chains or cage of the basket. Repeat until you run out of holes to play.

“In college disc golf, you play in a team format,” said Ferry. “You bring four players per team to events across the United States and play against other schools competing for bids to nationals. Typically, each regional event will have three D1 bids and six D2 bids available. The top three teams without a D1 bid will get one. The top six teams without a D2 bid that didn’t already receive a D1 bid that tournament will get a D2 bid. Penn State underperformed on the whole through the season. We never had a good chance at a D1 bid and barely snuck away with a D2 bid. The team the leadership chose to represent our D2 squad did not include me, which makes sense because the ‘A team’ needed something new and I had the worst singles performances in the club leading up to that point. This year in college disc golf alone, I went to Olean (New York) and Pittsburgh. The club brought a team to Lynchburg, Virginia, as well. Nationals were held in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The D1 and D2 guys played the course they hold the United States Disc Golf Championships (on).”

The rest of the team was celebrating, no matter the level. “It was a bit of a party — for which I was in over my head in social awkwardness,” said Ferry.

“I never imagined I would be playing for a national championship in college until I learned they had collegiate nationals in disc golf my junior year,” he said. “Then I thought I would be ‘playing for’ the title, but there was never the belief I would win until I checked scores and it was myself and (teammate) Zack (Aneckstein) above the rest. I had serious doubts my score would hold because I thought a -11 or -12 would win. … I would argue as far as nerves, they went away on hole 4 and only came back at hole 17. I missed a 14-foot putt and I was certain that lost me the title. Birdie on 18 clinched it, though. … I only checked scores on hole 18. The pressure was more, ‘I want to beat Zack’ because of the friendly competition dynamic. I was done before a bunch of players started, so I didn’t think a -10 would stand the test of time. Of course, I also thought there was a chance a -10 would win, but at the time, that wasn’t the expectation.

“I saw a video of Paul McBeth’s -18 on the pro tour my freshman year of college,” said Ferry. “I forgot about it until some time later that year and started absorbing all the tournaments I could find coverage of. I convinced myself that I could be really good, so I bought some discs. Then I realized how big a gap there was between the legit professionals and some random college kid who thinks he’s hot stuff. I took to the fields and tried to see how I could make a disc fly. I never played a course until I had great ability to manipulate the flight of a disc from distance. I was driving 400 feet on a good throw, but I learned quickly that: 1. Putting is really hard; 2. I need to miss these stupid trees someone put in my fairways; 3. If I’m close to the basket, but not on the green, I don’t know what to do. … Those pretty well describe my game to this day.

“As for why I stuck with it, I knew I could be good and liked seeing the disc fly,” he said. “It brought me the enjoyment of sports I had growing up, but now that I didn’t have a group to play soccer with on a consistent basis, I found something I could do alone or with friends. Basically, there was no point I thought I would be playing for a national title of anything until I was there. Then I never believed my skill set would yield a win at the course we played in singles. My distance is my biggest asset. I did not bring a single distance driver to the round and there are only a few holes that distance could benefit you. I wanted to play safe to keep the team in contention for that team title. Even once I saw that I was in the solo lead, I was pretty sure someone would surpass me.

“By the time I played a course, I knew most of the rules — to a higher standard than most people I play with today, most of the lingo, how to decide to throw a backhand or forehand, and what angle to release it on,” Ferry explained. “I believe I shot even par, give or take a stroke, at Milton Craven Disc Golf Course in Kane. I got my first eagle in that round, but I lacked consistency and took some bogeys on a relatively easy course.

“I am 100 percent self-taught, except for taking some tips from friends and watching some YouTube videos if I was at a complete loss,” he added. “I used my physics knowledge to develop proper backhand form. I tested anything and everything I could think of for putting. If it’s possible, I’ve tried it — yes, including left-handed. I played as much as I could handle to learn what to throw when on the course.

“As with anything in life, there were frustrations with disc golf in the early stages,” said Ferry. “I would stop for a couple weeks, then go back out and try again. My mental game was purely dependent on results. My friends and clubmates at Penn State helped me through that. This is a game. You play the game to have fun, not to see a low number on a scorecard you might look at twice in the future.

“I would improve in waves,” he said. “Something would click and I would get a bit better, then deteriorate until something else clicked. Overall, it was a steady improvement, but it felt like I was plateauing all the time. I played as much as I could, which would inevitably burn me out, then come back with a clear head and play better. Just a bunch of ups and downs.”

Safe to say the 2025 Collegiate Disc Golf National Division III Singles Championships were an ‘up.’

“It’s hard not to care when my name is up there,” said Ferry. “Again, I had no expectations of winning. I just wanted to score well for my team.

“As for me saying what my next hobby might be is impossible, but I will know it when I see it,” he promised. “Maybe for once in my life, I’ll keep my name out of the papers for it.”