This past weekend the Kootenay Up and Down, an annual disc golf tournament presented by Cranbrook's Encore brewing and supported by Innova Champion Discs, drew in just under 140 players to compete at the Wycliffe and Cranbrook courses.
For the fourth time in the event's six year history, Cranbrook's Casey Hanemayer took down the win in the Mixed Pro Open (MPO) division, dominating the field of 26 by 12 strokes and shooting a 1048-rated final round at Wycliffe DGC, 36 points above his 1012 player rating.
"You know, I haven’t been feeling the best playing this year and I played so poorly last year at this event," Hanemayer said. "It was kind of redemption for me, because it’s my home course and I want to play good every time I play this event. I had more motivation this year and I went out and did my thing. Didn’t push the envelope too much, I just tried to go through my routine every time and play solid disc golf and that happened."
Last year the Up and Down was won by Invermere's Max Regitnig, with Hanemayer taking sixth place. This year he took the lead in round one and held it from wire to wire, shooting the lowest score in each of the tournament's three rounds, including his final round nine under, tying the course record on the new layout at Wycliffe, which was completed last year.
His final round included a blistering stretch of disc golf, where after a par on hole one, Hanemayer went seven down through six holes, including a hole-in-one on the challenging hole six: an uphill shot through a double mandatory tree gap. He then birdied hole seven, another challenging shot shape and what would be considered to be a bonus birdie by most players, before he said he "started cooling off," which was also when the wind picked up.
Having played a lot of disc golf in the Kootenays as well in Lethbridge, where he went to university, Hanemayer is no stranger to playing in the wind and that helped him through the final stretch.
"The wind picked up and Wycliffe is hard in the wind and it started playing way harder. I did come around and made a lot of good upshots, which helped a lot to save pars," he said. "You want to be able to trust every disc in your bag, and at this point with [my sponsor] Prodigy Disc I’m able to."
Hanemayer had a solid 2024 season, with seven MPO wins including a win at the Falcon's Flight A-Tier in Alberta, and a second-place finish at Canadian Nationals. He has two more tournaments in Canada to round out his season, one in Calgary the other in Rossland, before he will head to Australia to compete for Team Canada at the World Team Disc Golf Championships.
David Trussell from Whitefish, Mont. took second in MPO and there was a tie for third between Calgary's Jackson Pease and Cranbrook's Ben Loggains, who jumped up numerous spots in the last round for a podium finish.
In the Women's Pro Open (FPO) division, Gabrielle Lee from Victoria took down the win followed by Cranbrook local Kristy Shields in second and Calgary's Amy Janzen rounding out the podium..
In the MA1, or advanced division, local disc golf ambassador Bob Holbrook took down the win, fighting back from a six stroke deficit in the final round with a personal best round of three under par at Wycliffe and ultimately winning by six. This was his second B-Tier win and third win overall this season and was also the biggest field he's won in, beating out a 30-player field.
The history of this event goes back to 2017, shortly after Wycliffe was first built and a small, one-day C-Tier tournament was held.
"Then 2018 was the first year we did a two-day event using the College course and Wycliffe and it happened to be the BC Provincials, so that was the inaugural event for what our plan was to do for the Up and Down," explained tournament director Serge Gosselin. "We just didn’t call it the Up and Down that year because we ended up getting provincials.
"Honestly we couldn’t have picked a better name for the tournament because this course is and up and down, whether it’s the height or your score."
Gosselin, was aided in making this year's Up and Down happen by assistant tournament director Bruce Ogilvie, Jen Metivier, Jamie Derkach and Cranbrook Disc Golf president Steve Reedyk.
"I love this event, I love what’s going on here," he said. "Wycliffe is looking and playing amazing, the amount of work the Cranbrook Disc Golf Club is really amazing. This place is kept really nice, there’s no garbage here, people are so good at cleaning up after themselves, so it’s a gem of a course and it probably is one of BC’s best if not the best course right now."
"Obviously Serge does a great job every time and it’s getting better every year," Hanemayer said. "They’re doing tweaks here and there. The course, same thing, we’re doing little tweaks every year and making it better. That’s what we want to do with a championship level course, right? Every year do little things that make it a tiny bit better and leap it, leap it, leap it. Because we want to hold Nationals here, that’s the next step."
Gosselin said that holding Nationals in Cranbrook is a ways away yet. While Wycliffe DGC is a suitable venue to host a tournament of that calibre, Gosselin said the area would need two more courses of that level before that could be considered.
"I’m really pleased with keeping [this tournament] a B-Tier right now and just making it a very high-level B-Tier," he said. "We were rated the third biggest B-Tier in Canada last year, so I like being at the top of the B-Tiers and staying there."
If you're interested in playing disc golf in Cranbrook, follow the Cranbrook Disc Golf page on Facebook. Registration for next year's Kootenay Up and Down will be available at discgolfscene.com
