Team Disc Golf For Everyone: A Brief History

Prologue: Early Days

Like many kids I played countless sports growing up, but by high school I had narrowed it down to just baseball and tennis. 

Each was rewarding in its own way.  In tennis there was creative freedom – I could hit any shot, anytime I wanted, and the only person I had to answer was myself.  But baseball provided an opportunity to be part of a team, and to learn about cooperation, leadership, and trust. 

Unfortunately, baseball and tennis were both Spring Semester sports and so in my freshman year I was forced to choose.

I chose tennis, mainly because I made varsity as a freshman – an honor, which I now realize, I probably overvalued. By my senior year I had quit and was spending most of my free time making music or at the park throwing Frisbee.

Part 1: The Quest for Team Disc Golf

For ten years I was, what you might call, a ‘casual’ disc golfer – no bag, and only two discs: a CE Valkyrie and a classic DX Aviar.  When I did finally get involved with competitive disc golf around 2009, I showed up to my first league at Wickham Park in Manchester, CT, a large hippie named ‘Big Nick’ took a look at me, my two discs, and declared, “that’s bold.”

The Northeast is home to one of disc golf’s premier team-format events, the New England Team Challenge (NETC), and it wasn’t long after I started playing competitively that I began to covet a spot on the best NETC squads in Connecticut: Team Wick.  At any league or tournament, it was easy to spot Team Wick – they wore Team Wick shirts, Team Wick Hats, had Team Wick-stamped discs, and greeted each other with shouts of, “Team Wick!”

There was, however, no clear-cut way to get on the roster: a spot had to open up and you had to know somebody, or be known, to get an invitation. I left New England for Colorado in 2012 having never gotten the chance to play Team Challenge disc golf.

My second near-miss with Team Disc Golf came in 2014.  The Colorado State University Collegiate Disc Golf Team was coming off a National Championship win in 2012 and a second place finish in 2013, and Captain Austin Montgomery was actively recruiting his squad for the new season.

This time around I knew the right people: I had been competing alongside Team CSU players ever since moving back in 2012, and I was playing at a level that would have given me a good chance in tryouts.

But I was a first-year graduate student and father to a 6-month old baby boy.  There was no way I could make the necessary commitment to a Collegiate Disc Golf Team with National Championship ambitions. Once again, in January 2016, I moved out-of-state, this time to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, without getting a chance to play team disc golf.

My last near-miss came, not because I lacked access, or because I didn’t have the time – I had plenty of both.  This time it was because I simply missed the cut. 

In the history of the Southern National Team Cup, only two teams have ever won: the team from Mobile, whose roster has featured the likes of Matt Orum and Cameron Colglazier, and the team from Baton Rouge, which hasn’t had quite as many marquee names, but which has nonetheless developed into something of a regional powerhouse – featuring Southern National OG’s like John Fowler and Kevin Weiss, as well as up and coming Junior Champions like Team Discmania’s Thunder and Silas Schultz.

In the summer of 2018 my game was peaking – I had won three of the previous four tournaments in the MA1 division and, with a spot on the Baton Rouge SN Cup Team reserved for an MA1 player, it seemed like mine to lose.  And lose it, I did – for whatever reason I just wasn’t able to bring my A-game that day. The spot went to another player.

Baton Rouge defended their SN Cup Title a few weeks later, their third win in the nine years of the event, and – happy as I was for my friends – I couldn’t help feel the sting of another opportunity lost.  It was at this point that I started to think about ways to create a new team-format event that would give players such as myself – who had, perhaps, always wanted to play as part of a team but never had the chance – an opportunity to experience team disc golf. 

Part 2: Birth of the Game of Throws Team Format

By the summer of 2018 I had been in Baton Rouge for two and a half years, and had become closely involved with Kingfish – the local disc golf club.  After narrowly missing out on the SN Cup, and with team disc golf on my mind – I realized that I was in a pretty good position to try to establish a new team-format event.

I started shopping around some ideas, including a Louisiana State-wide Team Championship based on the New England Team Championship format.  But just as the idea was gaining some traction, I learned that I would be, once again, moving out of state – this time, heading back to Fort Collins.    

With only about four months remaining in Louisiana, I knew that there was no way I could see a new State-wide event through to completion.  There was, however, another option: 

The previous Fall, we had run a 7-week PDGA Sanctioned League Series called, “Game of Throws” – it was really just your typical PDGA League, excepting the dragons and medieval battle themes.  But with 52 players during the course series, and averaging about 27 players per week – I realized, heading into the Fall of 2018, that we already had everything we needed right here at home to run a great team-format series.

Designing the Game of Throws Team Format was as much a matter of practicality as anything else – we asked, “What is the quickest, easiest way to piggyback a team-format event on top of an already-established 7-week PDGA Sanctioned League Series?” 

The format we developed addressed the obstacles I had run into during my 3 near-misses with team disc golf: anyone could register and show-up once a week – basically, the same schedule they were already used to with a weekly league – and they would be guaranteed a spot on one of the four Houses.  Moreover, anyone could make significant contributions to their team, regardless of their skill level.

The ‘Game of Throws’ theme fit so well with the new team format, with its ‘Lords’ and ‘Houses’, that by the time we were only a few rounds into the new season, everyone sensed that we had stumbled onto something special.  The popularity of the event continued to grow week by week, and by the end of the series in December I began thinking about ways to promote the new format to disc golf clubs around the country. 

Never did the possibility occur to any of us, however, that within 6 months Game of Throws would be going Global.

Part 3: Game of Throws Goes Global

Back in 2015-16, just as I was moving down south for three years in Baton Rouge, my old friends from Northern Colorado Disc Golf, Austin Montgomery and Chris Brubeck, had moved to Southern California to work for Discmania, U.S.A.  Now, three years later, just as I was beginning to think how to promote Game of Throws on a large-scale, I found out that Discmania was moving it’s USA headquarters back to Northern Colorado.  The stage was set.

My pitch to Austin and Chris in late January 2019, and to Jussi a few weeks later, focused on the idea that what had made the Game of Throws Team Format so successful in Baton Rouge was what would make it successful in other cities: any club could adopt the format, either as a stand-alone series or piggybacking on an existing weekly league, and it would be open to any players of any experience or skill level.

I’ll never forget the first thing Jussi said after I finished.  He looked down at his watch and then said, “You went 5 minutes over.”  <silence> But then he said, “I can see this becoming the largest team disc golf event in the World in a few years.” <chills>

Over the next several months we worked closely to figure out the best way to scale Game of Throws so that it would be accessible to as many disc golfers as possible.  What emerged was an event that was true to the format that we developed in Baton Rouge, but, with its Team Discmania Houses, and international reach, was also very much in the spirit of Discmania’s mission.

For me, of course, the biggest thrill has been to see Game of Throws grow into an event that has the potential to create amazing team disc golf experiences for players around the world.