How to Run a Scholastic Event
What is a Scholastic event? Scholastic events are school-affiliated events that use Scholastic Divisions. Their primary purpose is to serve high schools, but they are also available for middle school and elementary school competitions. Scholastic Divisions are much less restrictive than Junior divisions. Scholastic events provide points and round ratings. The points count as amateur-class points for the purposes of Worlds qualifications. Scholastic events are not classified as X-tier events, unless you wish to take advantage of the Competitive Endowment Program to raise money for your school club. Unlike Junior events, Scholastic events have a team (school) scoring component and team (school) awards.
If you want your high school or middle school club to compete against other schools, we strongly encourage you to run a PDGA sanctioned event. Why sanction your event? In a word, insurance. It is not unusual for a school/venue/public park to require proof of insurance, and the PDGA provides event insurance free of charge for its sanctioned activity in the US and Canada. PDGA sanctioning also provides tournament directors (TDs) with access to easy-to-use resources and tools. With a little practice, you can manage most of your event needs using only your phone.
Getting started
We suggest you start with a PDGA League. Once you have a date and location for your scholastic league (multi-week event) or tournament (often a single day event), contact your PDGA state or provincial coordinator with that information.
To run an event, you must be a current PDGA member and you must pass the certified rules official exam. A yearly amateur membership is around $50, and the rules test costs another $10 (good for 3 years). If you have funds left over from a PDGA Scholastic Club grant, you may use that money to pay for your membership and exam.
Getting the event set up
Next, fill out an online PDGA Event Sanctioning Agreement (screenshot below). Under the Classification tab, check Am divisions only. In the Event Type dropdown, indicate Scholastic. If you are unsure how you are going to score the competition, choose Singles under the Scoring Format tab.
PDGA Tour Event Levels & Tiers
There is a sanctioning fee ($25 for a league, $50 for a C-Tier) and a small player fee ($0.50 per player for a league, $3 per player for a C-Tier). Non-member fees (typically $15 per player per event) are waived for all scholastic events. A PDGA Scholastic League event with 20 players costs only $35 in total. If you charge each player $1.75 to play, your event will break even. If you charge a little more, you can use that money for awards, ice cream, etc. We encourage directors of scholastic events to charge as little as possible in order to increase participation rates. Per player fees/event are listed in Tour Standards.
Shortly after completing the sanctioning agreement, you will get an important event confirmation email from the PDGA with additional information and instructions. You will get a link to set up your event registration in Disc Golf Scene in that email. You can manually add each player, or have parents sign up their child. You will have access to free features to manage event registration and payments. Pro tip: the Disc Golf Scene application likes to use PayPal. If you have a club or personal PayPal account, what little financial transactions are required can be done in a matter of minutes.
When your event registration is complete and you are ready to run your event, you will have access to an easy-to-use application called Tournament Manager. You will get a login password in your scheduled event confirmation email and a link to Tournament Manager.
It is important to note that divisions will be “selected” whenever a player registers for that division. The TD can select a division in DGS if they’re setting up a registration page. If it’s a league, they need to enter players, not divisions.
Once in Tournament Manager, you will see scholastic-specific divisions:
- Boys’ Varsity (MSV)
- Boys’ Junior Varsity (MSJV)
- Girls’ Varsity (FSV)
- Girls’ Junior Varsity (FSJV)
Boys are not eligible to play in FSV or FSJV. The M in MSV and MSJV stands for mixed. If you’ve got a girl that wants to compete against the boys, she can play in MSV or MSJV. Unless you have experience managing PDGA sanctioned events, we recommend that you only offer these divisions and allow only high school or middle school players.
There are no age, class, or player rating restrictions. A high school senior who turns 19 in the calendar year is not eligible to play in a PDGA Junior division, but they can play in one of the scholastic divisions. A 16-year-old girl who is so good that she accepted a cash prize at a tournament can still play in one of these divisions. Graduating seniors and rising freshman (eight graders) may play in either Varsity or JV divisions. For reference, check out Junior division eligibility standards.
The TD can also add players manually in Tournament Manager (see screenshot below).
Tournament Central is a feature available for tournaments (but not leagues) within Tournament Manager that lets you create playing groups, assign starting holes/tee times, check-in players, remove players, etc. To access Tournament Central (when applicable), click the link at the bottom center of any page in Tournament Manager. Both systems write their data to the same database, so any changes made in one system will automatically be recognized by the other.
You may be thinking, I can’t keep all these software applications straight! Fear not, they work seamlessly together.
Disc Golf Scene basically handles event registration, and Tournament Manager/Central basically handles everything else. The applications are very intuitive. If you are ever in need of assistance, our Event Support and Training team is available to help you along.
After the event
When your event is over, you will submit a brief event report through Tournament Manager. You do not have to submit the event report immediately after an event. You will get an email confirmation on how to submit. It is mostly automated and only takes a few minutes.
Individual Scores
Each player (or a designated scorekeeper) should keep everyone in the group’s hole-by-hole score. Groups (also called cards) are typically 4-somes, but groups of 3 or 5 will work. Paper scorecards will work fine. Having a parent, coach, or vetted volunteer to keep at least a back-up scorecard for each group is often a good idea.
Parents, coaches, vetted volunteers, or older high school players may want to consider using the easy-to-use PDGA Live app on their phones to keep score for two reasons:
- First, scores will automatically update in Tournament Central and the PDGA results page in real-time. To enable this, you must check the Enable live hole scoring box on the setup page in Tournament Manager. Parents, coaches, vetted volunteers or players enter a code to use the digital scorecard to keep hole-by-hole scores on their phones. While running a league or tournament, you won’t have to spend time double-checking paper scorecards and posting individual scores. This is a HUGE time saving feature towards the end of the event, when time matters most.
- Second, the PDGA scoring app virtually eliminates scoring errors by preventing common issues with paper scorecards, such as illegible handwriting, math errors, and fraudulent score changes. When multiple players in a group enter scores, if one player enters a different score for a hole than another, the app immediately flags a "scoring conflict" for all players on the card. This forces them to resolve the discrepancy before continuing, guaranteeing the accuracy of each score as the round progresses.
A recommended practice is to have every player keep a paper scorecard of each player in the group’s score, while a parent, coach, or vetted volunteer keeps the digital scorecard for the group. This gives players practice keeping scores but helps ensure the scores are accurate and automatically uploaded.
Simplified Rules of Disc Golf (popular in Scholastic settings)
Team Scores
Scholastic events should have a team (school) scoring component and team (school) awards. How do you calculate team scores? One way is to simply add up the three or four best individual scores from each team with the lowest team score being the best. This is easy to calculate and works well when the teams (schools) are evenly matched. The issue with this method is one player’s (good or bad) score can significantly impact the outcome of the team score.
If you are unsure that the teams (schools) are evenly matched, use this easy to calculate scoring method. Award team points by place by awarding 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 points respectively. Add an additional team point for each player on the team to encourage participation. You can use Tournament Manager and Disc Golf Scene to help keep track of your team scoring for multi-week leagues.
You can also run an event using a doubles or team format, or a combination of singles and doubles/team formats for multi-round events, like they use in College Disc Golf. See the College Disc Golf Help page for more on splitting an event to contain both a Team and Singles format.
Encourage your players to become PDGA members
A PDGA Junior membership is only $30 a year. Each junior member gets a PDGA player number that they keep forever, even if they don’t renew every year. Each junior member also gets their own personal player profile that keeps track of their lifetime event history, player ratings and statistics. PDGA player ratings are like the handicap system used in traditional golf and useful when grouping players of similar ability. Think MaxPreps but without all the clutter and ads. Junior members also get access to free Disc Golf Network content throughout the course of each season. The Disc Golf Network is like ESPN+ for professional disc golf.
If you are running a PDGA sanctioned event and you need help, you can email our Event Support and Training staff at [email protected] or call the helpline at (762) 253-2200. You will reach a real person with the knowledge to help you, and the helpline is open on weekends. How cool is that?