Keremeos will be the central location for a provincewide accessibility event on May 26.
Pine Park in Keremeos, Kobau Park in Cawston and Whistling Kettle in Princeton are among the 30 disc golf courses across B.C. participating in the Playing in My Shoes clinic on May 26, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The free community event will give people of all ages a chance not only to try out disc golf, but also try and see what it is like to play with different levels of physical levels of ability accessibility.
“This is about everybody coming together, everybody supporting each other, everybody understanding because someone who’s blind, they have a superpower compared to you and me because they can see things we can’t see with their eyes closed,” said Dion Eden, the organizer and founder of All-Accessible Disc Golf.
“That’s the way I look at things. Somebody who has a different level of ability, they have a superpower that we don’t have.”
Participants will be able to try out four different throws; one from a seated position like a wheelchair, one with the non-dominant hand, one while blindfolded and one with ear plugs, all to simulate playing from another person’s perspective.
This year, the event has expanded to include other courses in the Similkameen, pop-up courses in Penticton and Summerland, and other courses throughout the Okanagan from Vernon to Oliver. The full list of courses that are participating can be found online at https://udisc.com/events/playing-in-my-shoes-7KS3Dd.
Keremeos’ Pine Park is the central hub for the event due to it being a fully wheelchair-accessible course. The course held the first Playing in My Shoes clinic there in 2023, but the event has since grown far larger.
“We already have plans for Canada-wide next year,” said Eden. “Then the year after, hopefully, the world.”
To encourage and support accessibility ahead of the event, Eden worked with Udisc to launch a new program that provides accessibility ratings for disc golf courses across the world, breaking them down from wheelchair-accessible, limited mobility and cane accessible and low accessibility.
Since the program launched, it has rated more than 2,200 courses worldwide. The program and the event were in part driven by Eden’s own experiences after he suffered injuries that impacted his own physical abilities.
“For example, Three Blind Mice (in Penticton) is a pretty hard climb and in comparison, Pine Park is a really accessible course,” said Eden.
“So I wanted to try and figure out from my perspective, how I could access courses differently and that’s kind of what led into the accessibility rating system and to identify different levels of ability.”
The Playing in My Shoes clinic also coincides with the first day of Accessibility Week in Canada. The first 15 participants who don’t have a disc of their own will get to take home a disc provided by MVP Disc Sports.
