Courtesy BYU Disc Golf

The best of the best on the collegiate level were together, and, for the first time, Cougars were among them. The Brigham Young University Disc Golf team competed in its first College Disc Golf National Championship on April 6-9.

Of the 20 BYU Disc Golf Team members, 10 traveled to the North Cove Social Club in Marion, North Carolina, for the championship tournament. The women’s D1 team finished in third place overall, the men’s D1 team took 20th and the men’s D2 team finished in 56th. Rusty Denton ended in 12th place on the D1 field, and Ammon Turman took 37th in the D2 tournament out of 212 competitors.

For this team, though, it was never about winning the championship. I was about the experience — of finally being able to compete together, on the national level, as an official BYU team. The disc golf team received permission from BYU athletics to form late last year after a successful student-led fundraising campaign.

“For the first time, we really felt like a team,” said Ryan Hunter, co-captain of the BYU Disc Golf Team. “We kind of planned the whole thing together, we raised the funds together, and we went and competed together.”

This was also the first competition for Devri Adams, BYU disc golf women’s team captain. She and Hannah Hunter, who make up the women’s team, were surprised to take third in the women’s category.

Courtesy BYU Disc Golf

“We weren’t expected to do good, because we hadn’t played together much and we hadn’t played in tournaments before,” Adams said. “We did good, because Hannah and I are so good at being a team.”

Although the men’s D1 and D2 teams didn’t place as high as they were hoping to in the competition, Hunter takes solace in the fact that this is only their first year competing together.

“We did feel like we left something out there,” Ryan Hunter said. “We didn’t place as well as we had hoped, but the more I think about it, us being a very young team… we did really really well.”

Ryan Hunter and the rest of the BYU Disc Golf team are grateful for every person who donated to their fundraising campaign last year, and those who made it possible for them to compete in the College Disc Golf National Championship.

“So many generous people donated and really made this a dream come true for us,” he said. “We would just like to say thank you to everyone who donated to that GoFundMe, to everyone who played in our fundraiser tournament in March, and to anyone who contributed to making this happen in any way.”

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