Big day yesterday and one of my favorites of the year, as I ran the 13th annual GreenHorn tournament at Dragan Field. I have a page on the site here that gives the backstory and purpose of the GreenHorn tournament. For the second year in a row, I was able to combine it with the Trilogy Challenge.
If there’s anything I feel is lacking in disc golf, it is proper rules awareness and education. Too often, players new to tournament play are thrown in and expected to pick up what they need to know as they go. And in doing so, are (unintentionally) taught some half-truths and misinterpreted rules as often as they’re shown and told the correct way to do things.
To do my part to correct that, I run the GreenHorn tournament every year and do my level best to give some of our local players a proper grounding in tournament rules and etiquette before they venture into the larger disc golf tournament world. No going into bigger tournaments thinking falling putts are fine and throwing from OB is the norm.
The Trilogy Challenge makes a great compliment to that goal as it gives every player, new or veteran, everything they need to play a tournament including a driver, a midrange, a putter, and a mini-marker. I add a rule book to the package and it’s complete. Additionally, the Challenge draws tournament-experienced players to the event where they not only get to compete in the event, they also serve to provide hands-on mentors for the Greenhorn players. And on occasion, even those experienced players learn something during the rules clinic. 😉
Twenty players came out for the fun, eight just for the Trilogy Challenge, and 12 there for the full GreenHorn experience. It was a much closer battle for the Trilogy title this year with a 17 throw difference between low and high score (as opposed to a whopping 62 throws at last year’s event).
In the end, Lance Norton won the Trilogy round with the only sub-60 score of the day, a 57. For the GreenHorns, it was a close battle the whole day, requiring two extra holes before Shannon Cote emerged the overall winner of the day, shooting 61 +65 = 126. Full results here.
Next week continues the Trilogy and GreenHorn events, only separately. Saturday I host a second Trilogy Challenge at Enman Field in Brunswick, and then on Sunday, it’s GreenHorn Doubles. Same idea as the singles, only we double up the fun, best-shot style.