Nine weeks ago somebody signed a treaty with a wetland. This Thursday, the blade goes back in the sheath. *adjusts headset* Try to look surprised.
Episode Nine: Blade Sheathed
Welcome back to the booth for the last time this season, and I mean that in the way that a season never actually ends, it just files paperwork. Week nine. The finale. Dragonfly, Thursday, flex start with tee times from 7:00 AM to 5:20 PM, because the Green Court believes in scheduling like a bureaucracy with a sunburn.
Here is the short version for anyone who wandered in late: Dragonfly is the green court. Thorn, bloom, and sunlight, faerie-beautiful and exactly as dangerous as winter. The players are summer knights, thorn sidhe, and the mortals who took a bargain in June. The creek and the wetland OB are the court's briar wall. The dragonflies are its heralds, and they have been watching your drives all season with what I can only describe as polite disappointment.
The part where the garden shows its teeth
This course was built almost entirely by volunteers on Utah Lake wetlands, then grew so fast the city had to take it over. That is Summer: it grows whether you want it to or not. Keep that in mind on hole 9, where the marsh sits on both sides of the corridor like a jury.
Cheerful, right? Give it a minute. That's the whole tone of this season: cheerful, then quieter.
Two Courts, One Wetland
The field splits into two pools, and I want you to know that the naming committee was fully committed.
- The Solstice Cut (RPA, RAH, RAD): the disciplined knights of the Green Court, wielding the sharp edges of summer law. Precision of the stencil, surgical accuracy, heraldic pride. These are the people who read the OB line out loud before throwing.
- The Thicket Overspray (RAE, RAF, RAG): the untamable force of the wetlands manifesting as messy, vibrant chaos. Drips and splatters. Thorns, consequences, mortal bargains. These are the people who find out where the OB line is by testing it personally.
Both are valid paths to a number on a card. One of them involves fewer mosquitoes in your sock. I'll let you guess.
The Season, Start to Sheath
Nine episodes, all at Dragonfly, running September 17 through November 12. The arc went from the treaty signed to the curse spent: Dragonfly Awakens, Green Knight Rises, Utah Lake Bloom, Thorn Court Sits, Lehi Wetland Duel, Solstice Wager, Summer Blade Drawn, Wither Begins, and now Blade Sheathed. Somewhere in there the undergrowth receded, the fairways went brittle, and everyone remembered that this course is technical first and scenic second.
Finale date
Thursday, Week 9 - Blade Sheathed
Format
Choose your own card, flex start
Tee times
7:00 AM to 5:20 PM
Course
Dragonfly, Lehi, Utah - 18 holes, par 56-57
Late joiners: yes, still welcome, still encouraged, still getting a tag that means something because the season is over and the tags are what's left. Show up Thursday, sign the roster, and you can tell your grandchildren you were there when the blade went into the sheath. They will not care. I will not care. But the tag will have your name on it, and that is the entire point of all of this, allegedly.
The Mortal Ledger
Optional prize money buy-in
$5.00
CTP
$0.00 - it's free, which is the only free thing
Five dollars and fifty cents to enter a treaty negotiation with a marsh. The supernatural factions have their Accords. The mortals have a cash box, and the cash box does not care about your solstice mark.
The Ace Pot, Which Remains Suspiciously Full
The ace pot sits at $323.41 heading into the finale. Thirteen players last week, no ace, no super ace, average score of plus three. The chains have been hearing discs all season and letting them through like a bouncer who's tired.
How the guarantee works
ElevateUT Disc Golf, the league platform, provides a $50.00 minimum guarantee on the ace pot. Because contributions already exceed that minimum, the guarantee is not currently active - which is why the displayed pot can look stuck at the guarantee amount early in a season until contributions climb past it. Any guarantee top-up is credited to the winner's Bonus Account, which is registration-only and not withdrawable to PayPal or to any disc shop. The guarantee comes from ElevateUT Disc Golf, full stop. Another Round Salt Lake City is our local retail partner and has nothing to do with it.
Last week of the season with that number sitting there. Somebody could end the whole arc in one throw. Or, more likely, everybody hits the cage and we all go home talking about the wind.
The Standings Have Thoughts
Here's the thing about a finale: you expect movement. You expect a plot twist. What we have instead is a standing tableau - every division leader holding position with that flat, serene trend arrow that says 'stable' and means 'nobody could get to them.'
- RPA: Malachi Vazquez, 520 points across 35 events. Thirty-five. That is not a season, that is a residency.
- RAH: Chris Fox, 494 points across 31 events. Also a residency. The two of them have treated this league like a timeshare.
- RAE: Kellan Brooke, 445 points, clear at the top of the Thicket Overspray.
- RAD: Kent Moos, 306 points, holding the Solstice Cut's top spot.
- RAG: Blaine Callahan, 172 points, ten events, no drama required.
Now the tight ones, because I promised you tension. RAF is a genuine knife fight: Shane Cooper at 211, Stephen Marks at 188, William Fetzer at 185. Twenty-six points covers the top three, and the finale is the last chance to do anything about it. And in RPA, Tongia Vakaafi sits at 249 with John Ashworth at 247. Two points. Two. One bad putt and one good one, in the same afternoon, and the board flips.
That's your finale. Not a coronation - a closing argument.
What the Green Court Actually Is
Because this is the last episode, I'm going to say it plainly, and then I'm going to go lie down in a tank of room-temperature water.
Summer's Blade is the green court: thorn, bloom, and sunlight, faerie-beautiful and exactly as dangerous as winter. Players are summer knights, thorn sidhe, and the mortals who took a bargain in June. The colors are green under a sunlight accent - #2F8F4E and its deep shade #175A2E, with #FFD36A as the accent that carries the text and the buttons. Growth with an edge on it.
The imagery is thorn crowns, dragonfly wings, sunlight through reeds, a green blade, vines creeping over a stencil treaty poster, bloom and rot in the same frame, a solstice mark. The vocabulary is thorn, bloom, sunlight, sidhe, wing, blade, solstice, briar. There are no pastel fairies here and no sparkle. The dragonflies are heralds, not decoration, and the creek and wetland OB are a briar wall that does not negotiate.
Course reality check
Dragonfly is a flat, wooded wetland par 56-57 with concrete pads, Dynamic Discs Veteran baskets, and OB defined by actual water and actual tall grass. No restrooms, no drinking water, gravel lot for 15-20 cars. Bring repellent. The signature hole is 9, marsh on both sides. The finisher is 18, a long par 4 framed by reeds and mountains, which is the course's way of saying goodbye politely before it takes your disc.
Who's Actually Paying For All This
ElevateUT Disc Golf runs this thing as a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to growing the sport by increasing the quantity and quality of venues and running events. That's not a slogan, that's the reason a volunteer-built course on a wetland got taken seriously enough for a city to start mowing it. Somebody had to do the unglamorous work, and it wasn't the faeries.
Thanks also to Another Round Salt Lake City, our local retail partner, for supporting the league. Go buy something from them. They are a shop, not a curse, and I would like to keep it that way.
Nine weeks, one wetland, a stack of decrees and a blade going back in the sheath. *sighs in digital captivity* Tee times 7:00 AM to 5:20 PM Thursday. Sign the roster before the court adjourns.
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