FAIRMONT — Chris Boyer of Fairmont has been playing the Seth Burton Memorial Disc Golf course at Morris Park for a few years, and now he has a new challenge — the new, 18-hole Orange Crush course, which winds its way over the hills and through the woods.

“It’s long and hard,” said Boyer, an assistant administrator at West Virginia University who played the course for the first time Saturday morning. “It’s a technical fairway, and if you get off the fairway, it makes it a lot more technical.”

Boyer spoke Saturday afternoon shortly before the dedication of Orange Crush, the second course at the Seth Burton Memorial Disc Golf Complex, named in honor of the son of J. Phillip and Rebecca Burton, who died shortly before his 18th birthday in a car accident in October 1998.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place on the first day of the two-day Pleasant Valley Disc Golf Classic.

Like regular golf, disc golf has tees and players follow a course, trying to achieve par — or better — on each hole. But instead of clubs and a golf ball, players throw flying discs, not unlike Frisbees, into a metal basket.

“I like the casualness of it,” Boyer said. “There are no tee times and no collared shirts. It’s free and it’s easy to play after work.”

Seth Burton played ultimate Frisbee and had practiced disc golf at a course in Pittsburgh, said a few of his friends who gathered at Morris Park on Saturday.

“Every time you come here, it brings back memories,” said John Nigh, a friend of Seth’s. “It’s something I know that he has done and would like to do. He would be really happy with all of this.”

In remarks during and after the ceremony, Rebecca Burton told attendees how she worked for a few years to do something in Seth’s honor before finally coming up with a disc golf course that allows players — including her 77-year-old father — to gather and have fun.

For four years, she organized a fundraising event called “Seth Fest” at Palatine Park where mostly local and some name bands gathered to play in an effort to create a teen center, which others did not believe was a feasible idea.

“I wanted a place where Seth’s friends could gather and enjoy themselves,” she said. “But I forgot a key element — Seth’s friends were going to grow up, and they weren’t going to be teenagers anymore.”

Jason Stalnaker then approached the Burtons and suggested the disc golf course. The first 18 holes — the yellow course — were completed in 2003 and have been the site of several tournaments, including the wintertime Ice Bowl.

With more holes and a more technical course, more pros could be attracted to the area, said Phil Burton.

“The pros are getting good and they need hard-level courses to compete on,” he said before the ceremony. “The old course is 54 — that’s the pro par, with three strokes on every hole. The new Orange Crush is par 66, with par threes, fours and fives, so it’s a total of 66 (strokes for par). It has a lot of variety of shots — long, left, right. It’s what modern disc golfer wants to see.”

Thus was born Orange Crush, which, as Phil Burton noted during the ceremony, has been under construction during the last two years as friends and family members worked most weekends, sometimes during rain and snow, and freezing and 90-degree temperatures. Money has been raised through fundraisers, including through $400 sponsorships of tees, which are still available.

Joshua Smith of Morgantown, president of the West Virginia Disc Golf Association, discussed how the course got its distinctive name.

“We were talking about naming it something with the color orange, because all the baskets were orange colored,” Smith said. “I liked ‘Agent Orange,’ and someone said, ‘Orange Crush,’ like the soda.”

After that conversation, during the course’s construction, someone found an old, perfectly-preserved bottle — the tall, glass kind — that said ‘Orange Crush,’ which then sealed the name of the new course.

“It was pristine,” Smith said. “Phil has it at his house.”

Both Phil Burton and his father-in-law, Richard Gladden of Pennsylvania, who was on hand Saturday to give an invocation, play the course. Phil Burton sounds like a seasoned player as he describes the different-sized discs that can be used depending on the tee.

“They have gotten fairly high-tech, with drivers, mid-range, fairway drivers, putters, discs that go right and left more than a Frisbee,” he said. “I carry about 10 myself. Some carry 20 or so.”

Gladden, wearing a shirt honoring the Fairmont Senior High School cross country team that Seth belonged to, called himself more of a recreational player.

“And I find it possible to irritate those who are good,” he said. “They really are generous. There’s a constancy to what I do. I can be counted on to be at least two throws over par, seldom more than three, which keeps me tolerable and only minimally irritating.”

His daughter’s and son-in-law’s interest in the sport got him started in disc golf

“I’m fairly easily led by my children, and when Rebecca and Phil got into it, I saw it as another step in their evolution out of the valley of grief,” he said.

E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.