I arrived around 5am to Tallahassee after driving 4 hours from the Atlanta airport immediately following a delayed flight. Good times!
The first event of the 2018 US Open Overall was Disc Golf, played at the Tom Brown Disc Golf Course. The permanent course is a 24 hole course with multiple teepads and pin locations on every hole so for the US Open, they had us playing 18 holes (we didn’t play B, C, D, E or 16, 17) with a mix of short and long teepads. I got to play a few of the holes for warmup and went into the first round with a gameplan of playing smart, playing relaxed, and just having fun since I would be playing most of the course blind. I played pretty steady – nothing too crazy (good or bad) but took a few bogeys and a few birdies to end up even par, 55. I made a few solid putts but also missed quite a few putts in the circle, which is promising that I was consistently putting myself close enough to be having a birdie look. My 55 put me 3 shots off the lead going into the second round and at the top of the chase card going into day 2. Never a bad spot to be in!
The second event of the Overall was the first round of Discathon. The course features 36 gates, 3 tests, and a DDC shot to finish, instead of the usual target at the end. Unfortunately we were running Discathon after a solid 2 hours of rain which meant that the course was full of wet sand and soggy ground, but it also meant that the discs wouldn’t slide or skip as much as they normally would. I didn’t come out too fast in my heat and kept pace with Jeff, one of the course designers, and ended up passing him around gate 29/30. I threw more throws than I wanted to, but made 2/3 tests and made my final shot into the DDC court to finish with a time of 6:25, which put me into 4th place Overall. Not a bad time but not the best either. Lots of room for improvement. I felt surprisingly fresh given that I haven’t been running or training as much as I would have liked, but I can definitely tell that being leaner since eating low carbs and adding in 12-24 hour fasts has really helped my performance, which was exciting. For day 2, I’m going to be running in a semifinal heat with Sam, who had the 5th best time and so that’s encouraging since whoever wins the semifinal heat will advance to finals, and hopefully we’ll push each other enough that the other guy will be the lucky loser, and grab the 5th spot in finals.
After Discathon and before heading out to play some pickup DDC, I spotted the massive playground and suggested that we grab our minis and play some Mini Disc Game Within the Game. This started a few years ago when we played a mini disc golf course that was laid out in the Riverby Books store in Fredericksburg. It was so much fun that we decided to add a variation of it to every tournament we go to as part of the Game Within the Game series. We played 9 holes, weaving our way around the kids park, through the slide, through the tire swing, around trees, over canopies, on top of benches, and generally laughing our heads off, heckling each other, and having way too much fun.
I love my frisbee family and although the turnout for this year’s US Open is smaller than past years, we’re going to get to spend a lot more time together than we normally would, we’ll have an easier pace of events each day, which will be nice on our bodies, and I’ll have a lot of time to have discussions with my friends about the future of Overall, how we can get more kids playing frisbee, and continuing to deepen my friendships.
I’m happy with how the first day went, as I find myself sitting in 4th place in both events heading into the second day and second round of competition, doing my best to represent Canada as the sole representative!
Full results available here: http://www.conraddamon.com/overall/tournament.html?id=33.