Five Yukoners were in Langley, B.C., for the 2019 B.C. Open disc golf tournament — a three-day event sanctioned by the Professional Disc Golf Association.
Alan Hill, Jamie Roddick, Josh Paton, Ryan Norquay and Ben Monkman competed in the event, with Hill and Roddick both cracking the top three in their categories.
Roddick had the best result of the group, winning the intermediate category with a combined three-round total of seven shots under par.
Paton told the News that Roddick’s win was particularly impressive.
“He crushed it out there and that’s only his second sanctioned tournament,” said Paton. “That’s pretty impressive. And he’s only been playing for two years.”
Hill finished second in the advanced men’s division, finishing with a plus three score over three rounds.
“I was expecting him to be in the top three for his division,” said Paton, explaining Hill recently won an event in Anchorage, Alaska. “I don’t know if he had quite the same confidence, but he went in there and played a pretty solid game.
For his part, Paton finished 29th in the intermediate division with a +25 over three rounds.
Good weather for rounds one and three bookended what Paton called tough conditions in round two.
“My middle round was by far my worst round and it was pretty windy and wet when I was out there,” said Paton. “A lot of people’s scores on the second day were affected by the weather.”
Rounding out the Yukon results, Ryan Norquay was 24th in the advanced men’s category with a +22 and was 33rd with a +29.
The A-tier tournament is one of the biggest of its kind on the west coast.
“The PDGA has three tiers — A, B and C — so A, being the highest, is held to a pretty high level of expectations,” said Paton. “There has to be some really challenging well laid out courses and there are a bunch of different requirements for what (organizers) have to put in for time and energy.”
Although travelling to B.C. for tournaments is nothing new — Paton said a group of Yukoners have been making annual trips for a number of years — this was the first trip to this particular tournament.
“It’s about as big a deal as disc golf tournaments get on the west coast, so it’s pretty cool.”
Contact John Hopkins-Hill at john.hopkinshill@yukon-news.com