New Zealand and Latvia take silver and bronze medals
The Inaugural World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) 2022 Virtual Sport World Team Disc Golf Championship (VSWTDGC) hosted by Disc Golf Valley wrapped up Sunday the 20th of February after five weeks of play and 13,159 rounds of Disc Golf on the iOS and Android OS supported online game app Disc Golf Valley (DGV) by Spinoff Games.
The Great Britain team earned the gold medal with a combined score of 41 under par. Sushibar (Female) and Mark (Male) who are both relatively new players to DGV only took up the DGV online sport after the start of the Pandemic. In a close contest, Team New Zealand was awarded Silver with 37 under par in front of Latvia taking home bronze with 35 under par. The first round of play saw CZE, GER, GBR and MAS get out in front on the Grizzly Gulch course with only 5 points splitting the top 7 teams. However, the 2nd round on the Kaho Park course saw the points gap widen and the field start to spread. By the end of the 3rd round on Pioneer Bay there were clear margins between the 18 teams.
“With the fast growing interest in online sports, we were unsure how many experienced and full time gamers would enter the event. Interestingly, the majority of the finalists reported to not play any other online games and most had physically played either Disc Golf or other Flying Disc sports. For the first event to crown champions, WFDF was excited to reach more than 3,250 participants from 37 countries,” stated WFDF President Robert “Nob” Rauch. “WFDF is very much looking forward to the next championship event with an aim to reach more players and more countries.”
Since the 17th of January countries have participated in separate qualifier rounds to find the best female and best male from each country, who then formed a mixed gender team to represent their country in the Finals. Following the country qualifiers, eighteen mixed pairs teams from the 40 eligible countries progressed to the Finals this past weekend where each team member played 3 rounds. Results were based on stroke play, with results cumulative with teams aiming to hold the lowest combined score possible.
WFDF Disc Golf Chair, Charlie Mead commented: “Amazingly, the age difference between the oldest and youngest finalists was great with 41 years proving that age really doesn’t matter when playing virtual sports. The diverse backgrounds from the participants outlines the opportunity for Virtual Sports to play a big role in the pastimes of many and all. Engineers, Students, Accountants, Neuropsychologists, new parents on maternity leave and teachers along with people with a range of other occupations found the time to play online in the comfort of their own living room.”
The final official results for the top 10 countries are:
P1 – Great Britain (-41)
P2 – New Zealand (-37)
P3 – Latvia (-35)
P4 – Germany (-34)
P5 – Malaysia (-33)
P6 – Czech Republic (-29)
P7 – Finland (-27)
P8 – Denmark (-24)
P9 – Sweden (-23),
P10 – France (-18)