Albert Lea has a toy store, several cafes, manufacturing businesses and several senior living facilities, to describe a few businesses in town. It now has a new disc golf store after Demon Discs opened at 2343 Leland Drive next to Walmart in December.

“It’s a sporting goods store specializing in disc golf discs and disc golf accessories mostly,” said Colt Amos, one of the co-owners of Demon Discs.

For anyone unfamiliar with disc golf, Amos said the game was similar to regular golf, except with discs replacing golf balls.

“You have different discs that do different things like different speed discs,” he said. “You have drivers and mid-range, and you have putters just like in regular golf.”

The difference is that players try to get the disc into a basket instead of a hole.

Amos and fellow co-owner Stephen Navarro decided to open after noticing there weren’t disc golf stores in the area.

“You’ve got to go two hours north or two hours south down to Des Moines, and there’s a lot of really good courses in this area,” Amos said.

They also loved the location of the building, next to Walmart and off the interstates.

“Seems like everybody’s been liking it,” he said.

“Everyone that comes in, they want to support us and be here for us,” Navarro said.

Since opening, they’ve seen visitors from Austin and Iowa.

And the location was ideal for the pair.

“The disc golf area is just down the street on Hammer Road there, so it’s not too far away either,” Navarro said.

Amos said his  interest in the sport started when he was younger and lived in Rochester before he got away from the game.

“I moved here a couple years ago,” he said. “Since I’ve moved here everybody in this town is really into it, so I’ve gotten back into it pretty heavy the last couple years.”

Navarro started playing in middle school.

“[The school district] took you out on a little adventure out here to Bancroft Bay,” he said.

He also saw that he was good at it, so he decided to stick with it.

And while disc golf isn’t as mainstream as football or basketball, the duo believed it could become that.

“We think it’s growing pretty quickly,” Amos said, while Navarro noted the sport was starting to pop up on ESPN.

Amos also argued the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns helped the sport’s popularity increase.

“It was one of the only sports you could actually play and still maintain social distancing,” he said.

For Navarro, disc golf allowed him to get outside and exercise. The game also served as a stress-reliever.

“Take a walk in a pretty park, might as well bring a disc with you and throw while you’re walking, that’s all it is really,” Amos said.

For anyone interested in playing, there are two courses at Bancroft Bay Park, and Amos said they plan to hold doubles games there through the UDisc Disc Golf app from May to September. Scroll the events and look for Demon Doubles hosted by Demon Discs.

“It’ll be every Sunday, we’re thinking like an $8 buy-in,” Amos said. “Then it’ll be random doubles that we’ll pick before we start.”

“It’s just a big group of people that meet up at a designated time,” Navarro said.

Anyone is invited to play the 18-hole course.

The shop also has regular frisbees for ultimate frisbee. In the meantime, the duo is working on their website: demondiscs.com.

“Once we get our website up … we’d maybe like to see if we could sponsor some kind of team through the high school or some kind of ultimate frisbee team, too,” Amos said.

Amos and Navarro are also considering opening their own course.

Demon Discs is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Saturday.