The BoD, along with our league directors, have spent the past month trying to come up with a path forward for leagues to begin in June that satisfies our parks partners.  This situation is fluid as more parks are opening back up for organized activities.  We will update the disc golf community in Kansas City as we receive updates from municipalities.

Our June league schedule is as follows:

  • Monday – Pleasant Hill
  • Tuesday – Heritage Park
  • Wednesday – Shawnee Mission Park
  • Thursday – New Players League @ Pleasant Hill
  • Friday – Bad Rock Creek

They will start Wednesday, June 10th, at Shawnee Mission Park.

We’ve put together an FAQ for the month of June as leagues begin on a select number of courses.

Why are only certain leagues allowing play?

KCDG has been working with municipalities to determine the best course of action for their citizens and their parks.  As of the date of this writing (May 21st), only Johnson County (Heritage, Shawnee Mission Park), Pleasant Hill (Lake Park), and Liberty (Bad Rock Creek) have given us explicit permission to begin hosting organized activities within their parks starting June 1st.  We will continue to communicate with all departments and update our members and the Kansas City disc golfing community at large as we’re provided more information.

Are there any additional restrictions on leagues?

In an effort to maintain consistency across leagues, KCDG contacted all of it’s parks partners to come up with a list of new guidelines that will conform to the requests of all of those departments.  Based on those communications, KCDG has determined that the following will be required to meet their requirements:

  • Online Registration
  • Online Scorekeeping
  • Online Payout

The BoD met with many of the league directors who volunteered to run leagues in 2020 to get feedback on the best way to proceed.  Because of the infrastructure required to support both online registration and payout as well as concerns over payment and payout fees from online banking solutions like PayPal and the logistics of payment from solutions like Venmo, we have decided that in the month of June, leagues will be hosted as a casual event.  This means no online registration or payout at any of our June leagues through at least June .  

No payout?  Really?

Really.  The concern over taking money is not only for the players, but the volunteers who would be interacting with more people by taking money and handling payout.  KCDG has no desire to put it’s players or it’s volunteers into any situation they do not feel comfortable with, and until we have a streamlined method for handling online payment that the players are OK with, we’re going to focus on getting people out to the course and playing.  

Am I going to have to sign a waiver?

Yes.  We’ve been working with our insurance company on this as our insurance policy is requiring it.  The waiver will be signed online at https://kcdiscgolf.org/waiver-form/.  Signing the waiver will cover you for the entire league season.  We are still working on the waiver process for tournaments; for now that will go through the online registration for those events.

How do I sign the waiver?

The workflow for signing waivers can be found at https://kcdiscgolf.org/2020-kcdg-covid-19-league-and-tournament-waiver/.

How will I check into a league?

Checking in for the league will be easy.  Go to your LD, and give them your name.  They’ll check the list of people who have signed the waiver.  If you haven’t signed it, you can do so on your smartphone.  Due to the stipulations put in place by our insurance policy, you are required to sign the waiver to play in 2020 leagues.  

Now that I’ve checked in, how do we play golf?

Your LD will put together cards of preferably 3 people but no more than 4.  Scorekeeping will be done via the uDisc app.  For those who do not have this app, it can be downloaded from the app stores on both Apple and Android devices.  Your LD will try to put together cards such that at least 1 person on the card can keep score via uDisc.  In the event that there’s no one able to keep score digitally, LDs will have a few scorecards available. We would like to avoid this if possible.  There will be no passing of a scorecard, either physically or digitally.

My card has finished our round.  Now what?  

You’ll email/text a picture of your scorecard to the LD. Each LD will communicate their preferred way of receiving the scorecard.

And that’s it?

Well, not exactly.  Since we aren’t able to do payouts, we’d like to figure out a way to recognize how people are performing in each league.  After the LD gets scores, they’ll be uploaded and shared on our website and Facebook pages. So while you may not be receiving cash or vouchers in June, we’d like to recognize those who play in our leagues.

And that’s it?

One of the other requests we ask of participants in June is to let your LD know how you’d like to go forward with online registration and payment.  One of the concerns we had about beginning leagues with this in place was the the potential for fees as well as the increased burden on volunteers to handle payout.  For example a $5 league would cost around $5.50 to a player after Paypal fees.  If you were to win $25 at that league, you’d get paid out around $24.75 after fees. While services like Venmo are potentially free as long as the sender is sending from their bank account (otherwise there’s a 3% fee on the sender), the overhead on the LD to distribute winnings through apps like this would add to their workload, and having a central figure distribute funds for all leagues would be an even greater amount of work. We wanted to get feedback from league players before imposing this on them.  As you give feedback to the LDs, we’ll re-evaluate our strategy each month for the rest of the league season.

And that’s it?

Ok, last one.  Like most things going on in 2020, there’s a list of guidelines to play in the league in a socially distant manner that’s satisfactory to our municipalities.  Much of this has been spelled out by the PDGA already, but we’ve compiled a list of the items we think are most important below:

  • Maintain at least 6 feet of distance from all others at all times. 
  • No touching of other competitors discs/bags/anything.  
  • If your disc comes to rest in the basket, remove your disc before another person putts.
  • When removing your disc front he basket, try to just remove the disc, not touching parts of the basket.
  • Everything inside of the uDisc Bullseye (3m/12ft) is considered a tap in.

This list could go on and on, but the biggest thing is to respect the people you’re playing with and around and their distance. If a league director feels that you’re flagrantly violating these rules, they have the authority (backed by the KCDG BoD) to ask you to leave the league. LDs will be in communication with the BoD and each other throughout the season, so if you’re asked to leave the league, you will not be allowed to participate for the rest of the 2020 season.  Don’t be a jerk.

And that’s it?

That’s it.  Thank you all for understanding our current situation, and our desire to get people out playing the game we all love. With the amount of social distancing and isolation we’ve had to endure over the past two months, it will be good to get out on the course, get some sunshine, and see familiar faces again.  We have no illusions that the 2020 KCDG League season will look drastically different than years past, but we hope to see you on the ride with us through this.