San Diego Aces 2011 Membership Appreciation BBQ
Aces Members,
Summer is finally here and its time for some fun in the sun. Your Board of Directors would like to invite ALL Aces members to our first ever Membership Appreciation BBQ! This event is for MEMBERS ONLY; so only bring friends that are currently members or plan to join at the event.
Saturday July 16th at Kit Carson Park DGC – (Near Practice Baskets)
7am to 9am –Early Bird Work Party
9am to 3pm – Bag Tag, Lunch, Games
We will be serving a FREE lunch to ALL Aces Members!
Menu:
Pulled Pork sandwiches, water and Gatorade.
Schedule:
ALL Day – Memberships will be available
7am – Work Party – (Raffle tickets given to volunteers for Shwag provided by Kinetic Disc Golf)
9am – Bagtag Challenge
12:00pm to 1:30pm – Lunch
1:30pm to 3:00 – Ring of Fire, Putting Contests, Etc.
All your Board Members will be in attendance, so come on down and meet the team that is working to bring more courses to San Diego.
2011 Club President,
Ryan Meyer
The Challenge @ Goat Hill – 1 Week Away!!
There’s one week to go before The Challenge @ Goat Hill, a 2-round, 36 hole PDGA-sanctioned tournament being held July 3rd at Center City Golf Course in Oceanside, CA. Work is being done on the course right now to install 15 new basket positions and new rubber tee pads for short tees. You can sign up for the tournament online at http://www.discgolfunited.com/disc-golf-tournaments/tournament-dashboard.cfm/tourn_id/213
Angel Garcia represents at Am Nationals
Each June, top amateur disc golfers from around the U.S. converge on Milford, Michigan with their eyes on a big prize – the U.S. Amateur Disc Golf Championship. “Am Nats”, the name given to the event by players, is quite a tournament to win, because it means you have conquered “The Tobbogan”, an 8,824 ft., par-62 monster of a course that many call the best in the world. This year’s winner was Ben Calloway, from Davenport Iowa – a solid player who finished 4th earlier this year at the Bowling Green Amateur mega-tournment. Calloway fired two 1,000+ and a 999-rated round to win by 2 strokes over a field of 155 other golfers.
But the big news for San Diego disc golf fans is the performance of Aces member Angel Garcia, whose final-round 56 equaled the hot round of the tournament, and moved him up to 4th place, finishing just four shots behind Calloway. Angel’s 56 allowed him to pass 10 players on the final day of the tournament – no small feat. And that’s after moving up from a tie for 23rd place after the first round. Angel adds this great performance to the list of other top finishes he has had this year – winning the Advanced Amateur division at The Memorial in Phoenix and the Green Valley Open in Yucaipa. Angel is sure to return to San Diego with lots of Discraft Schwag (Discraft is the main sponsor of Am Nats).
Following Angel’s example of charging up the leaderboard, Aces member A.J. Risley also finished strong with a 1002-rated 59, which moved him up 36 spots to 32nd place. A.J. was 93rd after the 1st round and 68th after the second round, but was able to finish “in the cash”. Along with fellow Aces Carl Renda and Dale Chambless, he’s now driving home before hitting the road again for the Beaver State Fling in Oregon.
Which local courses have you played?
OK, so where have you played? Right now there are seven permanent disc golf courses available for public play here in San Diego County. We’ve put together this little poll to get an idea of where our members and readers have played – nothing scientific of course, but food for thought. I think the #1 answer will be pretty easy to predict (it’s been there 30 years, after all), but numbers 2, 3 and 4 might be worth a few bar bets. Choose all of the courses you have played, but vote only once (this isn’t Chicago, after all) and feel free to forward the poll to your friends. We’ll get back to you with results next week.
Introducing Disc Golf to the X-Games crowd
Representatives of the San Diego Aces recently had the chance to take part in a unique charitable event: the 9th Annual Rob Machado Golf Experience, held at The Crossings Golf Course in Carlsbad. A resident of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Rob Machado is one of the world’s best competitive surfers, well-known for his laid-back and fun-loving surfing style. The Rob Machado Golf Experience is an annual event held to raise money for the Rob Machado Foundation, an organization with a mission of supporting environmental programs and education in Southern California. This year’s event theme was “Super Heroes” and sure enough, teams of four players each dressed up as their favorite comic book and movie super heroes to take part in this event. Each of the 30 teams paid $1,400 to participate in the event, with teams made up of pro surfers, X-Games athletes, representatives from sporting goods and apparel manufacturers and other “sporting celebrities”, all in support of the Rob Machado Foundation.
The San Diego Aces were asked to set up a disc golf hole on the golf course as part of this charity event. Imagine you are a golfer (dressed up as Iron Man) and after playing several “regular” golf holes you step up to the next tee to find out you don’t need a club or a ball to complete the hole. Instead, the hole is a disc golf hole and your score is based on the number of throws it takes you to get a “plastic saucer” into that “chain thingy” down the fairway. Well that is just what happened! Players arrived at Hole 8 to receive instruction from Aces members Randy and Allison Wylot on the basics of throwing disc golf discs before trying out a practice disc golf hole of about 180 feet. Participants were given Disc Golf Association (DGA) Aftershocks and Innova Aviars to complete the hole.
Aces Ryan Meyer and Greg Olsen drove the super heroes’ carts as they WALKED up the fairway to play their next shot (well, The Flash probably ran). After finishing the practice basket, Mark Verrochi met them on Hole 8 – a 215 foot par 3 disc golf hole that played up a hill and to the left with a crosswind from left to right. After some brief instructions, the group played the hole and the lowest score obtained by one of the group members was used as their score for the hole and was included as part of their ACTUAL SCORE for the golf event!
Out of the 120 participants and a few guests, about five of them had previously thrown a disc golf disc. None of the groups ended the day with birdie on the hole but there were many pars and about 6-8 bogeys. Innova and DGA donated prizes that were given away to participants that came closest to the basket and to participants who threw the farthest throughout the day, along with mini discs for every participant.
Overall the hole was a great success and nearly everyone enjoyed the opportunity to try out disc golf. many thanks to Randy Wylot for organizing the Aces’ efforts and to Rob Machado for including disc golf as a part of this wonderful event.
San Diego Disc Golf does Social Media
How do you find out about what’s going on in the local disc golf world? Well, this site, obviously. And talking to your friends, for sure. But what else is out there? Here’s a non-exhaustive, incomplete, somewhat biased list of where you can find disc golf info using some of our popular social media tools.
Facebook – Yes, it’s everywhere…Facebook this, Facebook that. I know. But Facebook has some great tools that make communicating about disc golf easier to do. With a Facebook account you can connect to your friends who play disc golf by “friend-ing” them (and even put them in a group, so they don’t infect your other friends), send messages (and now Facebook e-mail), create calendar events, create groups of people you want to communicate with and then you can “Like” (but not “Dislike”) all of these things. You can even create advertisements and target certain groups of people to receive those ads (I’ve been doing that to promote tournaments for a while). Some local disc golf pages from Facebook include ours: San Diego Aces, as well as pages for Kit Carson Park DGC Morley Field and Montiel Park.
Twitter – Do you tweet? Some of us do, and you can add the San Diego Aces to that list. @sandiegoacesdgc is our Twitter name and even if you don’t use Twitter, you’ve probably seen our tweets. That’s because this website allows us to display tweets over in the right margin via a widget, and because the Aces Facebook page can also receive and re-post tweets. That allows us to quickly update both the web page and Facbook page by simply tweeting once. It’s twoo! Other popular disc golf Twitter feeds are @innovadiscgolf, @disc_golf (DGA Discs), @discraftdg and @csusmbdiscgolf (Cal State Monterey Bay, one of the hosts of 2011 Pro Worlds).
Gowalla – What is Gowalla, you ask? Gowalla is a social networking site that uses your smartphone’s GPS location to help you find cool places nearby, and then let you “check in” and leave your electronic mark and comments. Most restaurants, clubs, stores and points of interest have “spots” on Gowalla, and users collect “stamps” for all the places they check in at as well as “pins” that reflect the number of check-ins or types of places they check in at. You can friend other Gowalla users and share with them where you have been and your comments about your stop there. You can even create “trips”, which are collections of Gowalla spots that have a common theme. There are trips that are are sight-seeing excursions, pub crawls and scavenger hunts. And now there’s a Gowalla trip to San Diego disc golf courses.
Discgolfers’r’us – One of the earliest disc golf social media sites – definitely one of the first that was set up specifically as a social media tool. On DG’r’us you can set up a free account with your own home page. There are discussion boards, picture and video uploads and on-site “clubs” that anyone can set up. Home pages are also customizeable – if you know a little html programming you can bring in your own apps and widgets.
And of course, there are other ways of communicating that may not be specifically social media sites, but they have communication tools. PDGA.com is the web site of the Professional Disc Golf Association, and along with their list of upcoming tournaments and their on-line course directory, they host the DISCussion board, a message board that covers a wide varety of disc golf topics. You have to be a PDGA member to post messages, but anyone can read them. You can find a fantastic on-line course directory at dgcoursereview.com, along with course reviews and a message board. This site probably has the best mapping tools for finding disc golf courses. Another site with a full listing of courses is discgolfscene.com. Discgolfscene allows users to set up profiles and post comments for their friends, and also has pages for each course where you can leave comments and pictures. Both dgcoursereview and discgolfscene have tools for tournament directors to list upcoming events at a course, and both have tools for you to input your scores and track how well you play individual courses.
This list is by no means complete. If you know of a web site or smartphone tool that is useful for disc golfers who want to communicate – post a comment!
Aces looking for a Goat Hill Course Rep
The San Diego Aces Disc Golf Club Board will be growing soon…by one seat. With the addition of disc golf baskets at Center City Golf Course at Goat Hill in Oceanside the club is searching for the right person to act as Course Representative for Goat Hill. Applicants for the position must be prepared to communicate regularly with the management at Goat Hill, interface with local disc golfers who play Goat Hill, and attend monthly board meetings of the San Diego Aces (2nd Monday of each month).
Interested parties should contact Aces Club President Ryan Meyer at ramskemeyer@gmail.com. Appointment of a Goat Hill Representative will be discussed at the upcoming Aces Board meeting, Monday, May 9th.
Pro Spring Fling Nearing Capacity
58 players and counting have signed up for the Pro Spring Fling at Kit Carson Park. Spots are limited so sign up now by contacting Mark Verrochi to guarantee yourself a spot in this event. Any remaining spots will be given out on the day of the tournament starting at 7:30 AM on a first come/first serve basis.
Reminder: Trophy only entry fee is $25 flat rate (no discounts apply).
Hole updates:
1. Hole 18 will be in the standard position for the tournament.
2. Hole 13 has a drop zone. If you go OB on tee shot, you must play next
shot from drop zone (with penalty).
During lunch we will be giving away a Mach Lite in a ring of fire along with watching Adazm Nash’s son try to break the world distance record for his age (4 years old). All day, spectators and participants can try to win one of three Mach Lites by throwing at them from 150 feet away. And don’t forget to stick around at the end of the day for a chance to win the grand prize in the raffle, a brand new green coated Mach III portable basket (a $450 prize).
Any questions or to secure a spot in this event, please email mtv@alum.wpi.edu or call 603-986-7314. If reserving a spot, please provide full name, pdga number, division, and if playing trophy only.
See you Sunday!
San Diego Aces Disc Golf Club 