A mid-afternoon mist descended on a disc golf course among woodlands in Leicester, Mass., and added to the tension of the moment. The Disc Golf Pro Tour’s MVP Open had come down to a two-person playoff.

The soon-to-be-crowned women’s tour champion Kristin Tattar had placed a second shot on the green. Her attempt wouldn’t be a chip shot, but it forced her opposition, Natalie Ryan, to answer.

Both had something to play for. Tattar wanted to add a 10th win to a dominating season where the victories included her game’s world championship. Ryan, who became the first trans woman to win at the elite level of the sport with a victory at the Great Lakes Open in July, eyed her second win of a breakout season.

Behind the ropes as the 28-year-old Ryan prepared her shot, a fellow disc golfer and trans woman twice her age watched nervously.

“My heart was pounding so loud that I’m sure everybody was hearing it,” Kelly Jenkins said. “I was holding my breath every single throw because it is nearly impossible to beat the world champion in a playoff.”

Ryan was standing in the moment to do the impossible because Jenkins marked the path in 2014. That year, she stepped to a first tee at a tournament in Kentucky and became the first publicly out transgender competitor in Professional Disc Golf Association history.

‘I was playing disc golf in the wrong body and my game was horrible’

For over 30 years Kelly Jenkins has lived for disc golf as a player and cheerleader for the growth of the game on the courses, and on the sound set of her television show, Kelly’s Quest, that profiles transgender athletes.

Her life in the game has seen her up close with the figures of its “outsider” history right up to the game’s creator.

“I knew Ed Headrick personally,” she notes with prideful smile when speaking of the the man best-known for inventing the Frisbee as we know it and the game Jenkins loves. “I sat down with the inventor of disc golf and talked him for hours. That was back at the beginning of my disc-golf journey.”

Natalie Ryan wasn’t even a twinkle in a parent’s eye when Jenkins first grew into this sport in the 1990s. At the same time, Jenkins was also…