PORTLAND — Josh Lichti stood 10 or so feet from a metal basket. A bright orange disc in hand, he turned to me.

“What new players will often do is try to throw it just hard enough that it will barely make it in,” Lichti said. “It’s better to throw it with a little bit more force.”

“You’ve gotta have conviction,” Monica Thomas added, as we stood on the fifth hole of the public course at Payson Park.

Lichti tossed a disc and landed it easily in the basket. Thomas threw next, bouncing one but landing another. It was my turn.

“Conviction,” I thought.

I was rewarded with a satisfying clang as the disc hit the basket’s metal chains.

Lichti, 40, is the co-founder and CEO of UDisc, an app for disc golfers that has more than 2 million users. He and Thomas, 38, the company’s chief operating officer, moved to Portland in 2021 in part because of Maine’s access to disc golf courses.

UDisc’s data shows more rounds are played per capita in Maine than any other state, they said, and Lewiston-Auburn was the app’s No. 1 metro area in the country for the sport in both 2018 and 2021.

This week, I decided to see what the buzz was all about and asked Lichti and Thomas to give me a few pointers.

The public course, which winds in part through the woods at Payson Park, opened last year. It was a passion project for the locals behind JoySwich, which runs local leagues, popups and clinics.

Adam McHugh, one of the founders of JoySwich, along with his wife, Mae McHugh, and friend Matt Carroll, helped build the course with city support, volunteer labor, donated equipment and their own money.

“It was a long game, for sure,” Adam McHugh, 39, of West Falmouth, said.

Mainers have been disc golfing for a long time. Lichti said the first course opened here 49 years ago at Beaver Brook campground in North Monmouth. There are now 119, Lichti said, and more than half opened since 2019.

“You could spend an entire month playing in Maine, and not play every course if you played every day,” Adam McHugh said. “There’s a lot of opportunity to play new, interesting courses.”

Unlike most states, Maine has predominantly pay-to-play courses instead of public ones. That’s in part because 94% of the land in the state is privately owned, according to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. These courses charge a fee; a round costs between $5 and $10 at popular courses in central and southern Maine.

Each model has pros and cons, players said. Private courses sometimes have more amenities and are better maintained, and the playing area is generally dedicated to disc golf instead of shared with other park users. Public ones are often more accessible, especially to underrepresented groups.

Peter Ruby first heard about the sport from his nephews. He was skeptical until he saw the large number of cars in the parking lot of a local course. He opened Sabattus Disc Golf in 2006, and three of the four courses there are now listed in the top 100 in the U.S. on UDisc.

Early on, Ruby said, he saw that the sport mostly attracted young men. Over the years, he made an effort to attract families with kids as well, building courses of varying difficulty.

Now, he sees players of all ages and skill levels at his business.

“We’ve seen a substantial growth with families and young adults,” Ruby said. “We get parents that will come drop off three, four, five kids.”

Adam McHugh said JoySwich has taught clinics specifically for women and kids in hopes of expanding the demographics of the sport. Free courses are key as well, he said, and one reason he worked hard to see the Payson Park course built.

Lichti and Thomas are thinking about that growth, as well.

They described themselves as “aggressively mediocre” players, but they are vocal ambassadors for disc golf. Lichti grew up in Iowa, where he said the majority of courses are free. Thomas was born in Finland, where the sport is so common that she said gas stations often sell discs.

They brought me to Payson Park specifically to show off a rare public course and said they hope to see similar projects across the state.

As a newbie, I certainly felt welcome with Lichti and Thomas, even when I had to retrieve my wayward discs. They explained that discs are sort of like golf clubs, with different styles based on how far or fast you want it to go. They didn’t even laugh at me when I asked about the difference between a disc and a Frisbee.

Lichti demonstrated in the middle of Hole 5.

“Pretend there’s a cup of coffee on top of the disc,” he said. “And release it very straight.”

Historically, I do not have good aim. I held a green disc in my hand and lined up my body with the basket, which still looked very far away.

“Don’t feel like you have to throw it very far,” Thomas said, perhaps reading my mind. “That messes with people.”

I threw my disc — and it definitely didn’t land near the basket, but it also didn’t land in the middle of a tree in the woods.

UDisc lets you rate a round based on its “fun factor,” Lichti and Thomas told me.

We didn’t play a full round, but I’d say the fun factor was pretty high.