Interior News

This May, Kamloops will host the largest ever Disc Golf tournament that Canada has ever seen.

The Tournament Capital Open (TCO) will be held on May 26-29, 2022. Both the McArthur Island and Rose Hill courses will be used for the event. Kamloops Disc Golf Club (KDGC) Marketing Coordinator and Tournament Director Carrie Neal says the largest tournament its ever hosted had 167 players, so this will blow that out of the water. She is excited to help put this on after two very slow years.

Neal notes how this evolved from a plan to host the Canadian women’s championships, but then the pandemic ruined that idea.

“I really wanted to grow the sport for women and I thought in 2020 I’m going to bring all the women together and host the Canadian Women’s Disc Golf championships. But as fate would have and this pandemic happened, we had to cancel. We started planning for 2021, but thought people are going to be hungry for golf so lets just make this the biggest A tier we’ve ever had and open it up to everyone. And once again, we had to shut it down. So we started planning and dug our heels in and said 2022 has to be the year.”

Players will be coming to Kamloops from all over Canada and some will be coming in from the United States. It is a Tier A event as sanctioned by the Professional Disc Golf Association. “It is one level below an elite event and then you get into the pro tour. So it is the highest level one can get before the pro tour starts.”

There will be two pools of players. “We have a pro pool and an amateur pool,” says Neal. “When full registration opened up we had over 200 people registered within 24 hours. We were like, okay I guess we’re settling in for this and the nervousness started to happen.” She credits the  team that has helped organize the TCO to this point and get it to where it is now. “The city of Kamloops is on board. Tourism Kamloops is on board. This is huge. Without the backing and support of the city, which they have had since I started playing Disc Golf 22 years ago, I don’t know if it would be possible. They see the potential in Disc Golf and the growth of it, so that’s fantastic.”

Organizers are still looking for more sponsors to come on board and more volunteers to offer their time. It is hoping to build up the cash prizes as that helps to entice more player and bigger names to make the trip to Kamloops. Neal says for $50 you can sponsor a hole where they put a sign for a business on the course. They could also use a sponsor to help supply washroom facilities. Potential volunteers and sponsors can send an email to [email protected] to get that process started. “When putting on an event like this you can never have too many sponsors.”

Interested players can register here.