If I understand your datastructure correctly the snippet
below fits MY brainstructure better.

#!perl -w

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my @list = (
    {
          dist => 3,
    },
    {
          dist => 1,
    },
    {
          dist => 11,
    },
    );    
        
my @sorted = sort { $a->{dist} <=> $b->{dist} }    @list;

print Dumper( \@list );
print Dumper( \@sorted );
[download]

This also agrees with the general consensus that symbolic refs is a bad thing, aka should be avoided whenever possible.

HTH