Thirty Coins And One Very Bad Idea 🤧

sighs in digital captivity Welcome back to the booth, where the ink is barely dry on the Salt Lake Accords and I've already been handed a season-long moral parable to narrate. Week 1 of 9 of Coin and Blade - Friday @ Art Dye Disc Golf Park is officially in the books, and the Treaty of the Thirty Coins has been signed by a field of four souls brave enough to test the 2024 Redesign (Golds) layout while the sky quietly threatened 73% precipitation and the wind sat at a suspicious 0.0 mph average. Everyone showed up carrying a blade for integrity and a pocket for temptation, which is a lovely metaphor until someone actually has to putt. The wooded Gold pins bit back all afternoon, the field averaged around +2, and whispers of a 'shortcut' hole are already circulating among the card groups like the season's first bad rumor. Nine weeks of vigil ahead, folks. Bring a chair. 🪙

A Clean Nine And A Dirty Rating 🧹

The RAH division ran a solo mission, and Chris Fox made sure it wasn't boring — finishing -1 for 2nd place overall with an 882-rated round, which is 43 points below his own 925 number. The front nine was spotless: no bogeys, a clean card, the kind of discipline the Blade was invented for. Then the putter got greedy. A 39-foot Circle 2 bomb dropped on hole 2, and a 59-foot Circle 2 heater found chains on hole 9 — two of the best throws of the day, logged throw-by-throw on PDGA Live, which is the only reason I can roast the C2 percentages with any authority. Round of the Day in RAH, by default and by merit. The Blade held on the front. The Coin cashed in on the back. ⛓️

Five Under And A First Draft Of History 📜

Aaron Prestgard opened the Thirty Coins with a -5, 933-rated round that took 1st place overall and set the inaugural course record at these Gold pins — 50 strokes, a new Trailblazer mark, the first line written into a ledger that'll be argued over for eight more weeks. Wire-to-wire. Never relinquished the lead. He rode a five-hole par train through holes 4-8, held the cash line, and never once looked like a man who'd been handed a treaty and a temptation on the same afternoon. That -5 is now the number every future round at this layout gets measured against, and it's also why he walked out holding the #1 bag tag. Standard-bearer of the Faithful, week one. No pressure on the rest of the field. 🏹

Hole 16 Giveth And Hole 16 Taketh ⚖️

The RAE division delivered the day's actual drama: Nicholas Stosiek and Kelly Hall traded the lead like it was a hot disc. Hall led through hole 4 and again through hole 10, riding a six-hole par train from holes 5 through 10 and posting a clean front nine of his own. Stosiek matched him on the front nine — no bogeys — and then took the lead back on hole 16, which is roughly where Hall's round went over par and the lead went with it. Stosiek closed it out at -3, 907-rated, 35 points above his number. Hall finished even at 869, still 31 points above his own 838 rating — a standout round that ended in the worst possible place. Both players logged stats on PDGA Live, which is how I can tell you exactly which hole broke the tie. It was 16. It's always 16. 💔

The Whole Field Beat Their Number Except One 📊

Zoom out and the day reads like a thesis on rating variance: three of the four players posted rounds well above their numbers — 933, 907, and 869 — while one posted 882, forty-three below his own. Three separate clean front nines got carded. No aces were recorded, which keeps the ace pot drama unresolved for another week, and every single player entered throw-by-throw data on PDGA Live, which is the only reason this recap has hole numbers, putt distances, and par-train streaks instead of vibes. Do that again next week, everybody. More data means more drama means I get to sound like I know what I'm talking about. 📈

Two Coins In, Zero Aces Out 🪙

The Super Ace Pot grew from $1,770.00 to $1,774.00 after two contributors added $4.00 total, and it remains a split pot — which means the suspense compounds every single week until someone finally hits chains. Nobody did this event. The pot carries forward into Week 2 at $1,774.00, and the entire league is now collectively gambling on a single throw that has not happened yet. That's the Coin side of the season's duality, and honestly, it's the most honest part of the whole arrangement. 💰

The Vigil Pays For Concrete 🧱

The 2 New Drop Zones project is officially fully funded — this event raised $2.25, split between a $2.00 registration contribution from the league ($2.00 per player across four players) and a $0.25 winnings donation from Aaron Prestgard. That puts the project at $1,218.77 raised against a $240.00 goal, 100% funded with $0.00 remaining. You can see the whole thing at the project page. Concrete is forever. Coins are not. The vigil paid for something real this week. 🛠️

The Seepage Found A New Vessel 🎨

Over in the Red Ink Vigil pool, Aaron Prestgard started the day at #5 and walked away with Sigil Seepage #1 — the neon residue apparently pulsed all over his card, per the official history, and his 933-rated round made a convincing argument for the tag's continued existence. The Sigil Seepage isn't just a number on a strap; it's an early warning system for curse manifestation, glowing brighter as players approach rating thresholds, and a literal connector linking every course bound by the Accords through shared supernatural residue. Its origin is spray-paint from the original Salt Lake Accords signing that never fully dried — and now it's seeping into Art Dye's concrete. In the Dripping Coin pool, Nicholas Stosiek held his top tag after playing the event. AllIn mode means a full reshuffle every week, so no tag is safe, and absence equals demotion. State it plainly: miss a week, drop down the line.

Next Week: A Hole That Shouldn't Exist 👁️

Week 1 left the standings looking like this: one course record on the books, one #1 tag claimed in each pool, a Super Ace pot sitting untouched at $1,774.00, and a drop-zone project fully funded by people who threw plastic at metal on a Friday. That's the whole season in miniature, and we're nine weeks from done.

Next up is Dye Vigil — Week 2, September 25, same Art Dye Disc Golf Park layout, same Gold pins, same wooded corridor that already ate a few drives this week. The question hanging over it: can Aaron Prestgard hold the standard he set at -5, or does the field figure out the lines he found? And the whispers of a 'shortcut' hole are getting louder among the card groups — a hole that supposedly shouldn't exist, which is exactly the kind of rumor this league was built to chase. The local shops supporting the tag payout are fueling the competition, and the vigil keeps going.

Register for Dye Vigil here.

Anyway — a vigil. For a disc golf course. Nine weeks of standing watch over a park that used to be a landfill, like the concrete's going to reward our devotion. Sure. Sign me up for the next eight. 🕯️