Tournament Director

If you played in the ACT this weekend, it’d be awesome if you could fill out this quick survey for us. It’s 8 quick questions, plus a free-form textbox, plus an optional “your name” area. Easy. I just wanted to get feedback from everyone who played, and this seemed like the best way to do that. Thanks in advance!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C9K7J27

On more reflective matters post-tournament, now that I’ve decompressed from the weekend a bit more… wow. Planning for the ACT usually starts germinating around Thanksgiving/Christmas (I can’t help it) and really starts to get into gear around Feb/March of each year. Organization hits its stride about early-to-mid April, and all of May is one big pile of tournament stuff as more details fall into place. The entire week before the event is essentially spent living/eating/sleeping the last-minute details of the event, and by Friday night we reach the “hold on, here we go!” point. Suddenly, I find myself slowing down and it’s 9:30pm Sunday night, I realize two days have gone by, and I wonder “was that really it?” It’s all quite surreal as we go through the weekend itself.

The actual logistics of running the tournament on event day is like some weird, overly complex dance that everyone expects you to know the steps to, but no one ever bothered to TEACH to you. And you’re not allowed to hear the music. As I said at the awards ceremony, it really is the volunteer staff which I’m so lucky to have that is really the glue that holds the ACT together. I have these thoughts like “we should play alternate baskets in round 2, plus alternate pins where available” and I have people like Brian Carter or DM asking me if they can go move baskets when they need to be moved, people like Steve Ditter putting the trash bags over the “wrong” baskets where we have 2 permanent positions (and coordinating where players can help move them for us after round 1 is over – thanks to you guys as well!!), and poof it’s happened. It’s like some weird magical disc golf fairy is there to grant all of my wishes, except these are real people who all can never be thanked enough by myself. I simply float around making sure all of the wheels are turning, doing a few of TD-specific things, and otherwise help any of those wheels where needed. I simply say “we should do a basket throwoff”, come up with a few obnoxious twists where people get extra throws sometimes and free discs handed to them other times, can turn in receipts for free throws other times; and I have someone like BUC who runs the whole thing soup to nuts both days and does a phenomenal job of it without me really needing to intervene. I have people like my buddy Dave who doesn’t disc golf himself anymore, but still comes out every year to help with all the scorekeeping, being photographer to help document the event when I can’t be bothered to worry about carrying a camera to do the same, and doing any number of other random things that need being done. My wife Jen for doing all of the checkin, scorekeeping, helping me keep things organized through awards, and being so damn good at being able to grab my attention in a noisy crowd with a loud yell of “MCHALE!” so that I can make a call on something she knows I need to have a hand in. All that and for all of her support keeping up with things as we plan for this event, and her helping me to keep my head on my shoulders when putting all of this on sometimes starts to weigh a little too much.

Thank you thank you thank you to ALL of the volunteers who helped out this weekend, ALL of our sponsors for filling our player’s packs and donating prizes to our on-course CTP’s, basket throwoff prizes, and other items available for all of our players like all the drinks (both alcoholic and non). And definitely thanks again to all the players for coming out and participating. It really is fun seeing everyone out there enjoying (we hope) the event that we put this effort into hosting!