Life of a TD pt. 1

Life of a TD pt. 1:

For anyone considering running their own event, Please ask yourself a few questions; For starters, what the hell are you thinking? The work of a Tournament director is tedious, rigorous and generally speaking without much reward. Not to say that the experience is not rewarding, but if you are looking to be that cool guy that pulled it all together and gets hoisted on the shoulders after the event, you have another thing coming. If you have done your job correctly, you should go basically unnoticed. You had better love the community of the sport or else you are not going to have a good time.

The second question you should ask your self is, what am I trying to accomplish? What's my goal? For me, it is two fold. The first, I am a disc retailer, and the idea that I can sponsor my own event, and give my brand a platform to perform well, is a very big appeal to me as a business owner. But from the TD perspective, I really want to bring an event to my local area that players will enjoy and can be very proud to be a part of. I have seen some events that are thrown together and the experience is lack luster for the players. You get a sense that the event is more about filling someones pockets and less about giving back to the sport. I am trying to find a balance between giving the players the best possible experience from the event, while not going underwater from a business perspective. But all of this takes planning, planning, and more planning.

Right from the start, I knew this task was going to be time consuming, trying, and just plain tedious. In many ways it has been, but the PDGA does provide a great deal of tools and information to get the wheels turning.

For starters, I had to become an Certified Rules Official. While not difficult to obtain it was just the first obstacle in the long road. Don't attempt to take this test without reading cover to cover the rules book. It is not long, and will help you through the test, which is open book. While that sounds easy enough, the test requires that you have a solid understanding and interpretation of the rules. you will not find answers in the rule book, only the methods to decode the question/problem at hand. Even with an open book, I failed twice before finally passing the exam.

After the exam, begins the arduous task of planning your event. While the PDGA has a great deal of resources available to you, it is difficult to resource, and can be quite confusing on the details and specifics. Begin your process with your Regional PDGA Representative. Get to know them, and be ready to work with them. They have the veto power for the date and location of your event. Work on your date months in advance, preferably beginning of the season or just before. The earlier the better so you can secure your date. At the same time, be working on your venue, we all know that many times this is a publicly owned course, so be sure to work with your courses Parks and Rec department to ensure the date you have in mind is good, and that you will be able to obtain a permit for the event. I took over an event that historically took place on the last Saturday of April, after weeks of emailing, and missed phone calls, it turns out that the date we had in mind, was also the opening day of baseball for the towns little league and we are unable to hold that date for the event. Once we worked out the next best date, I was able to quickly notify the local PDGA Rep and approve the date. 

Once you have the blessings of your rep. you can then turn to the PDGA for sanctioning. This needs to be done within 10 days of the go ahead from your local rep. otherwise you could potentially miss out to another event that registers in the area before you. So do not wait to Sanction. 

Securing the dates and permits was a exercise patients, and took significantly longer than I had originally anticipated. And, realistically you cannot start planning anything else for your event until you have a venue, so be sure to secure these items as quickly as possible. 

In the next blog I will discuss some strategies around naming your event, and starting to look for sponsors. A key component in making a good event, GREAT. Until then, Happy Throwing!!

-HyzerBombs-