Grant Zellner PDGA:
In the upcoming PDGA Board of Directors elections, one of the candidates will be Adam Wright, PDGA number six, three, eight, seven at present out of West Union, South Carolina. Adam is a financial adviser with additional experience, extensive experience in broadcasting. and in media and in media management. Adam, thanks for your time today. Let's introduce you to those who will be casting their vote in the PDGA Board of Directors Elections.

Adam Wright:
Thank you, Grant. I do appreciate this opportunity to talk with you and to talk about my story and what I see as the future of the PDGA. As you mentioned, I spent 25 years in broadcast media before transitioning to becoming a financial advisor in 2017. I am married with three kids. Everybody in my family is active in disc golf. Now, my wife does not play, but over the years of running tournaments and volunteering. She was always support staff and helping us to do events. I began playing object golf with my dad at 10 years old when we moved to the house that I'm sitting in now. I'm actually on vacation visiting my mom. But my dad and I had played object golf around the neighborhood starting at 10 and it was a regular thing. And then shortly after we moved into this neighborhood, we discovered a disc golf course with baskets. This is back in 1980. And so I've been playing disc golf ever since. I did not get involved into playing tournaments till the late eighties. And I got involved in organization of disc golf in 1990 by becoming a member of the Minnesota Frisbee Association. I helped run the Minnesota Majestic back in the early days. ran some leagues, did some Minnesota summer tours, was heavily involved up until about 1996. And in 96, I decided to focus on my career, where I played regularly, but was not involved in the organization of disc golf until about 2007. In 2007, I got back involved in running tournaments, being involved in leagues. and course development, personally being involved in more than a dozen course projects, whether it was the installation, the design, the funding, getting the support from the community, and I've been involved ever since. I now kind of take a back seat to my kids. My 17-year-old is very competitive. He's playing later this summer in the Junior World Championships, and then my 18-year-old son plays competitively, and then my oldest son, who is 26. He plays competitively. But we have been involved in disc golf as a family since before my kids were born, and we continue to be so.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Wonderful stuff. Thanks for that background. That's 1980 plane object golfed in the neighborhood

Adam Wright:
Yes.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
from here to the light pole and then from there to the mailbox. And I love it. That's great stuff. When it comes to your candidacy now as a potential PDGA board of directors member, let's focus first on membership and all of the things that the board of directors do. in order to facilitate memberships. That would be growing memberships, reaching new audiences, retaining existing members. What are some of your thoughts, should you be a board member, when it comes to further developing members, especially in new groups of people that maybe are underrepresented?

Adam Wright:
Well, so I think one thing with membership, when I started playing disc golf, there was no reason to join the PDGA unless you wanted to play in the worlds. Because there was no other incentive. You would save $10 by being a member, but every club or every state only had one or two PDGA events. So the fact that they now have sanctioned events every weekend, everywhere you go. And the rating system, I think, is what encourages people to join the PDJ now. Now, when people choose not to renew or how do we get people to join who are not members, as a 53-year-old player who doesn't play as good as I once did, when I go and play tournaments, which I don't play a lot of events, I do volunteer quite a bit, but they always have us old guys. walking much further out on the course on a shotgun start. And I think when you're older and you got the bad knees, you got to use the pole cart, I think maybe taking consideration into where they put the older players in. And so I think that would encourage more older players to join and continue playing in events if it wasn't so maybe stress on the knees. And I like the one day flex tournaments. I'm playing in one tomorrow here in Minnesota. And I think the one day flex start events, I would play those all the time, have the opportunity, because getting one round in even a longer course is fine for me, but playing a longer course twice a day or playing a longer course two or three days in a row, maybe not as easy. So for the older players, I'm saying above 50 that enjoy disc golf. Those opportunities would help grow more older members to retain membership or members or people to join who aren't currently members if they found more competitive situations. I think competition is what really does drive people to want to get involved. And without competition, there doesn't seem to be a reason to get involved. I've always paid for my dues for the PDJ a majority of the years, because I like to give back to what has given me a sense of enjoyment over the years. And

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Wright:
then the other thing with growing the sport grant is, so my youngest son is 17, he's going to be a senior in high school. He is choosing to no longer play organized football, which he's really good at because he wants to focus on playing disc golf. There are other kids at his school that have stopped playing other high school sports because of disc golf. I want to see disc golf recognized. in all states across the country as an official high school sport, just

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Okay.

Adam Wright:
like golf and tennis and softball and baseball. Kids should be able to be on a disc golf team in high school, should be able to letter and should be able to have that on their resume. And right now, disc golf is not recognized as an official high school sport in any state that I'm aware of. And I would love to see that because we do have a lot of kids in high school that play. We have a high school summer league. in the upstate of South Carolina where I live, run by a former world champion, Sarah Cunningham, it is extremely popular. So why isn't it organized through the high school sports association of each state? I think that would grow and then catering to the older folks would grow. And of course we need to find a way to encourage more women and minorities. I'm not sure what those answers are, but I think we need to do more for those other. groups that are not as well represented.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
OK, well, some very interesting, unique ideas there. When it comes to the competitions themselves, obviously, the PDGA is focused on higher and higher quality, in addition to more and more because of the growth of the sport. There needs to be a place for people to play. You mentioned one day flex events, and that is certainly one of many types of events that the PDGA sanctions. What are some of your thoughts when it comes to? increasing the number of events, elevating the quality of events, and in particular, getting more and more TDs, especially new TDs, involved in running events.

Adam Wright:
All right, so that's a multiple point question.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
It is indeed.

Adam Wright:
So when it comes to events, I think that the more we move away from tournaments held at public parks, which don't always cater to a lot of people when there's other activities there is important. There

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Okay.

Adam Wright:
are more privately owned courses. There are, like, if you think about the Preserve, You know, in Clear Lake, Minnesota or Blue Ribbon Pines here, there's a facility in South Carolina that's not open yet called Oconee National. That will be a full private course. I think the sport needs to go to hosting more events at facilities like that that are designed specifically for disc golf and don't have all the other activities there. I know that we're on our way to that point. We're not quite there. And then I think some courses, now I love watching Disc Golf Network. I watch coverage almost every weekend that there's an event on. I like to watch it back so I can hear the commentary between shots. But a lot of the courses that we're seeing in the bigger competitions sometimes don't look as nice as maybe they need to look if we're trying to present the best of what we have to a broader audience. In some cases, there's construction equipment or park equipment in the background. It's maybe not in the best neighborhood. It doesn't always look as well kept as it could be. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think it presents our sport to people from the outside as well as it needs to. So I think there can be some considerations for there. And I also think when we do bigger events. If we don't have good enough cell coverage to get proper signals from the course for the broadcast, we need to rethink where we're doing those events. An example, Northwood Black, great course, challenging course, one of the best courses on tour, but there's no signal from the front nine. And so if we're gonna showcase our events there, maybe we need to keep that in mind. What can we do to improve the coverage there? Now, that's on the bigger events. As far as competition in smaller lo know that people know this I didn't know until recent longer protection for C t to be. Uh, in our local c that there's no more open in South Carolina for our event. But there's weeken nothing near us. Uh, but if there's no protection state coordinators know what the protections are and that there are no protections for C-Tiers and allow more groups to run events when they see fit or wanna run events, especially when we know C-Tier events aren't drawing from a large area, they're drawing from a much smaller area. As a person who likes to play a competitive event maybe once or twice a year, I'm not traveling to play a lot of competitive events grant, but

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Uh huh.

Adam Wright:
I would go to the local ones. Now I will go to watch, and I will go to volunteer, but I don't go to play, if that makes

Grant Zellner PDGA:
I

Adam Wright:
sense.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
see.

Adam Wright:
So I do think there needs to be some consideration there as well.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
And that opening doors to have more smaller events across more communities at the same time, so that there are more slots for players

Adam Wright:
Yeah.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
to to fill. OK, I understand exactly what you're saying. Sure.

Adam Wright:
Yeah. You know, to give you an example, so this weekend, I'm in Minnesota visiting my mom. We drove over from South Carolina a couple of days ago, and my boys love playing tournaments. So, well, let's check the tournament schedule. And we were looking to see if there was like a rated league in the area. We didn't find one close to where my mom lives, but we did find a one round. flex event on a Wednesday. And we went this morning, we practiced the course, and tomorrow we're all three gonna play it because it's a one-round flex event. It gave us a great opportunity, and that event's got 99 people registered on a Wednesday. You know, and I think that's fantastic. And I think that that might be a way to get more people involved and more opportunity to be able to see some of those events on a weekday where you can do a flex start and do the event throughout the day. I think it's a fantastic.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Okay. Good stuff. Okay, wonderful. Well, in the time that we have left, Adam, we want to give you a chance to cover anything that's on your platform, as they say, any priorities that you have that you want to make sure the voter knows these are what you'll be focusing on. Should you be elected to the PDGA board of directors?

Adam Wright:
So the three things that I listed when I was asked, the first one was about high schools across the country recognizing disc golf as an official sport.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Mm-hmm, right.

Adam Wright:
I understand they've worked on that in the past. I don't know how far they've gotten and what the progress has been, but that is a priority for me. Another one is I think there needs to be some safety considerations. When you have tournaments, on the shorter, tighter courses that were designed 30 plus years ago that are all between 250 and 300 foot holes where the tee for the next hole is 30 feet away from the basket and people continually throw in on groups. I just think there's a danger there and we need to figure out what is, I don't know what that answer is, but I think there needs to be safety considerations. When I cadded for my son at a tournament earlier this year, his group was thrown on four times. and twice missing people by less than a half a foot with high-speed drivers, and that's just dangerous. And so something needs to be done to make sure safety is taken into consideration on the shorter, tighter courses. And so that is a priority of mine as well. And I don't wanna sound negative at all when I talk about this next topic, but I think the coverage on... the disc golf tour is so much better than we had just a couple of years ago. I think the quality on the disc golf network is fantastic. I subscribe, I watch a lot of it, but I believe we're getting to the point where we need to get a real, when I say a real, somebody who has experience as an announcer to call the play-by-play and somebody to be a color commentator. because that's what a good broadcast is. It's an announcer and a color commentator. I think too much of the time, it sounds like I'm listening to two color commentators. And this is, like I say, I think for me, the coverage is fantastic because I really do enjoy it, but 25 years in broadcast media, I know what I'm listening for, I know what a good broadcast is, and we're close, but we're not quite where we need to be. And I would love to see us take those next steps because when... people who don't play, tune in to listen, they gotta be able to follow the action. They gotta be able to understand what is being talked about. And like I say, we're so much better than we ever were before and much ahead of schedule than I thought we would be. I just know that we can get better. And I think we're actually on the right track with that. I just know that we just need to make some of those steps to further the coverage. Because like I say, it is fantastic. I just know that it can be better.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Well, Adam, before we run out of time here, are there any final thoughts you want to leave with the electorate in terms of we'll just call it campaigning for yourself in the lead up to this year's elections?

Adam Wright:
Yeah, you know, my passion for disc golf, you know, goes back decades. Uh, I have friends and family that have heard me tell the disc golf story for years and years and years. And now I can share things and say, see, I'm not the only one. Right. Uh, there was a documentary about the Holy shot, uh, where Filo says, this is our thing, right? When you meet people who disc golf. it's our thing, right? It's so much different than any other sport or activity out there. We have a shared passion, we have a shared enthusiasm, and we all understand one another, and it's really a friendly, great sport, and I just wanna see the best for the sport, the best for the PDGA, and I want the PDGA to grow. I want us to get to that next level, and I think I have... ideas and I have the ability to help grow the sport beyond where we are now.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Adam Wright is PDGA number 6387, and he's running in the 2023 PDGA Board of Directors elections and asking for your vote. Adam, best of luck in the upcoming election.

Adam Wright:
Thank you, Grant.