Disc golfer takes flyer on expanding sport's reach
Competitor aims to expand game’s reach through his ‘Blue Power’ program
Scott Stokely saw something missing from his clinics, and he set about fixing it.
When Stokely, a 37-year competitor in disc golf (also known as Frisbee golf ), began holding professional teaching clinics, he noticed that an important segment of his potential target audience was missing.
“I would spend an hour talking to these professionals,” Stokeley said. “The problem was that it was excluding anybody who had autism or Down’s syndrome or who was a paraplegic or deaf or blind. It excluded a bunch of people.”
So, Stokely started the “Blue Power” autism awareness campaign in 2014 that transformed into including anyone who dealt with physical disabilities. In that time, he has visited 278 cities in 46 states promoting the sport to that segment of the population while also conducting clinics for professional disc golfers. There are more than 100,000 members from 47 countries of the Professional Disc Golf Association, as well as amateurs. It was at Arroyo Chamisos Disc Golf Course along the Arroyo de los Chamisos Trail behind the Genoveva Chavez Community Center that Stokely found himself on Saturday, giving a clinic for deaf players. Five people attended the event, which was coordinated by local professional disc golfers Ryan Flahive and Robert Huizar, a the former head football coach at New Mexico School for the Deaf, who won the Deaf Disc Golf Association National Championships this year. Flahive credited Huizar with helping point him in the right direction and making sure the clinic ran well. “He was a huge part of it,” Flahive said. “He got the word out, he helped us get the interpreter. And we can’t do this without an interpreter. He’s been a big help.”
The rest was up to Stokely, who brought a calm, patient demeanor to the group as he taught the basic elements to the sport — which is pretty much like regular golf, just with a flying disc. Stokely taught the participants how to throw the disc with the basic form he called “The Scarecrow,” which meant standing with both arms parallel to the ground.
Stokely showed the audience that whichever way their throwing hand pointed was where the disc was going to go.
“This isn’t about teaching you how to play, it’s just getting people out,” Stokely told them through an interpreter.
And getting people out to experience the sport is the hook Stokely uses to entice them to participate in disc golf. Stokely caught the bug while in Pasadena, Calif., in 1981, as he discovered a disc golf course across the street from his home.
“It was a real counterculture of misfits, guys who didn’t fit
into mainstream sports,” Stokely said. “So I kinda fit into that. It just happened that one of the 75 courses in the country at the time was right across the street.”
Stokely steadily grew to love the sport and became one of its top players during the 1990s. He won 22 world and national titles and was in the Guinness Book of World Records with the longest recorded disc toss of 693.3 feet in 1998.
Stokely spent a little more than a decade away from the sport before returning about four years ago, which coincided with his “Blue Power” initiative. He added that the sport has grown substantially since he first started playing, saying that about 10 million people worldwide participate. In the United States, there are more then 6,000 disc golf courses, and Santa Fe has at least three of them (at Asbaugh Park, the Institute of American Indian Art and Arroyo Chamisos).
“It’s become really big,” Stokely said. “When I started, no one really knew what it was.”
The sport might have to add a few more names to that list. After playing a couple of holes, the clinic participants peppered Stokely with questions about the history of disc golf, how to start playing and where they could go. Jonathan Garcia, 19 and a student at NMSD, was introduced to the sport about a year and a half ago because of Huizar, but talked with Flahive about disc golf events in Santa Fe.
“I adore it,” Garcia wrote. “I’m back to disc golf because I ain’t played in a long time.”
Stokely isn’t just here for the clinic — he handed out awards for the amateur tournament, which had about 30 disc golfers, and will participate in a professional tournament Sunday. Stokely said he plays in mostly small tournaments against competitors his own age.
It’s a different sport than the one he grew up playing.
“The top-level players, they are playing a much better game than when I was playing,” Stokely said. “The sport has really evolved. Me at my best was not as good as they’re playing the game today. Close, but not as good.”