The Battle of Twin Falls

The trophy and the falls.

Saturday brought us some great weather and some even better disc golf. Four teams from some of Vermont's finest courses converged on Twin Falls for the second round of the Group Smack Talk Challenge. The original two teams, Twin Falls and BCO, were joined by Team Waterbury and Team North Calais. In the beginning, there was smack talk. In the end, Twin Falls retained the trophy.

This time around the challenge was for stroke play with the top 5 scores of each team counting in each of 2 rounds. The home team, Twin Falls, played with Jon Moorer, James Sweat, Christian Keidel, Sean Bleything, Justin Kaulius, and Matt Cohen. All can be solid players, but there was heated competition. North Calais was represented by Dan Desch, Dave Carter, Aaron Moore, Jeff Spring, Al Rosa, and Josh Rappeport. Waterbury had Dave Frothingham, Anne Lewis, Justin DeVico, Jim Conroy, Steve Viglas, and Pete Hess. BCO brought Tyler Teed, Big B, New Pete, Zach Podhorzer, Matt Marro, and Mike Miller.

After round 1 featuring some very hot scores, Twin Falls and Waterbury were tied. Both teams had 12 strokes on Calais and 15 on BCO. For round 2 the top scores on each team made up the top card, with the second best scores on each team making up the second card, and so on down the line. For the most part, scores on the second round were a little higher for most players. But, I saw Jeff Spring crush a string of birdies to make a 7 stroke improvement on his second go round- from a 61 to a 54.

When all the scores were painstakingly counted, it ended up in a perfect tie. Twin Falls and Waterbury both shot 603 on the day. Calais got really close with a 604 and BCO was a bit off with 620. Like a disc golf tag match, the GST Challenge requires the challenging team to beat the defending team. So, a tie goes to the current trophy holder.

So, instead of an easy day of some outsider team beating Twin Falls, the Saint George-based team stays as the only team to hold the trophy.

Other Things:

*The venerable Pete Hess had the best overall score of the day, with a combined 110 with scores of 54 and 56. Quite respectable for two rounds at the Falls. He was four strokes ahead of Jon Moorer's 114 (54/60). Spring came back to shoot a 115 (61/54) and Dave Frothingham (56/59) shot 115 as well. Justin Kaulius (56/60) shot 116.

*On the day, with 48 rounds of disc golf being shot in all, only 12, or 25% of the total rounds, were in the 50's. Pete Hess and Frothy did it in both rounds. Moorer, Kaulius, Zach, Matt Marro, BCO Pete, DeVico, and Carter each had one round in the 50's.

*Rivalry watch: It's probably too early to call it a trend, but things worked out well. I beat Carter and I beat DeVico. That puts me at 2-0 on the day. I know it's not a GMPS event, but still. That puts me to 8-1 on a very young disc golf season.