In late September, I traveled to Northern British Columbia to speak at 5 schools about physical literacy, learning from failure, and challenging the students to get Unplugg’d. I was also booked to run frisbee workshops at most 4 of the schools, teaching kids all about throwing & catching, and giving them a look at what’s possible with frisbee.
I want to give a huge thank you to the generous support of BC Ultimate, who provided a grant to help make this trip possible! Also, a huge thank you to Daniel Martin from the Dawson Creek Disc Golf Club for helping to promote, coordinate, and arrange my trip to Dawson Creek and Fort St. John!
The week was certainly packed full of frisbee!
Sunday was the Kastaplast Bingo Blast which was a lot of fun, and I got to meet some of the local disc golfers. We played the course at Kin Park in Dawson Creek, played a round with 2 Kastaplast discs, and had to try and get a Bingo on our score card by shooting the desired score on each hole.
It was harder than I expected, and the challenge is that if you missed a hole, there was no way to make it up. I ended up with one bingo and had fun learning new discs (understable discs mind you) in very windy conditions. It was fun getting to open up on a few holes and throw some big drives!
Next up was two days at an elementary school speaking to kids and running frisbee workshops. One of the highlights was teaching a Grade 6&7 class to play David’s Kingdom – a game I learned during my trip to Israel. I usually play with Grade 4+ and find that the 5, 6 & 7th grades really take to it the most!
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A big thank you to Shaun for the opportunity and making sure that all of his students had the chance to take part in a frisbee workshop!
After school, I was fortunate enough to play a round at Swan Lake, which is a private RV campground, and has a very beginner friendly disc golf course on the property. Dr. Leroy Erikson, the owner of the property, was kind enough to take time to tell us all about the course, and spoke about some of this ideas for future improvements. It’s an awesome place for a tournament – although the holes would need to be lengthened to accommodate anyone above a very beginner level in disc golf. That being said, it would be a great course for a putter only tournament, or an event like the Trilogy Challenge, or a Kastaplast Bingo Blast. The property borders on a lake which makes for some beautiful views (and lots of dangerous throws & pin locations!).
Next up was a morning and afternoon session at 2 separate schools in Fort St John, which was my first trip to the city. I spent the morning teaching frisbee to about 150 high school students, from the very basics of throwing and catching, to disc golf, ultimate, guts, freestyle, and self caught flight. It was a ton of fun and I’m looking forward to teaching frisbee to more high schools, since I typically teach in elementary schools.
The afternoon was a full school assembly and frisbee demo to about 250 students at an elementary school. It was one of my more challenging assemblies, but I’ve learned to be prepared for anything, and the kids had fun watching me show them some trick throws and trick shots, so they had fun in the end!
A big thank you to Sam and Laurie for the opportunity!
In the evening, we played a pop-up course at course at Kin Park in Dawson Creek which included an ace run for $100 that I ended up taking after each of us had about 15 attempts! It was pitch black so we didn’t see the disc go in – we just heard it hit the chains after it bounced off the fence!
Thursday I was only at one school for the morning, but I still got to speak to the entire school and teach frisbee to about 300 students which was awesome! I had the afternoon free, which gave me a chance to check out a temporary course at Kin Park in Fort St John. It’s a beautiful space that doesn’t get used very much, and was well laid out, using the already existing space very well. Although I don’t play a lot of disc golf courses, it’s always fun when I’m given the chance to provide feedback and play with local disc golfers.
My final day was at a school even further north, about an hour from Fort St John, where I spent the day speaking and teaching frisbee to about 180 students from Kindergarten to Grade 6, and did some demos outside during their lunch recess. I find that rural schools and students who live outside of the city get the most value from my presentation and workshops since they typically don’t have the same access to sports or extracurricular activities as those students in larger, urban schools. I had a great day and I owe a big thank you to Melody for the opportunity!
I had a great time in northern BC and look forward to speaking at more schools in the area in the future! It would be great to get disc golf going in order to have enough interest for a middle or high school disc golf tournament, and get more kids playing!
Some stats from my week in Dawson Creek and Fort St John:
- # of students: 1,500
- # of schools: 5
- # kms driven: 2,000+
- # discs lost: 0
- # of coffees: too many to count
Thanks again to everyone who made the week possible! I’m open to traveling anywhere in the world so if you’re interested in having me come speak & teach frisbee to your school or in your district, please Contact Me.