Ok,

I wanted to announce that I have chosen to run for the Board of Directors and turned in my information to Brian Graham over 2 months ago. I feel that the last 10 years that I have devoted to the betterment of disc golf locally can be expanded upon by me helping at the national level with all that I do. (You will be able to read all the stump speeches I sent in later I am sure!)

My platform ideals are to help bring our sport to a new level with focus on youth driven initiatives as I still do not see our sport reaching the heights that it needs to in order to help us grow at the next level. Another angle is to help drive the PDGA to help with better management of our Major events to support the clubs at a local level. I understand the pain and frustration that a TD and club must endure, and hopefully can help defray that in the future of our sport.

I have been a Marshal for the last 7 years, I have ran (well was TD...) 2 Worlds in the last 7 years and have been an active member of the Kansas City Disc Golf club over the last decade. This has included my raising through grants over $500,000 for the betterment of disc golf locally.

It’s time that we had some new faces on the board, and with my broad range of skills (as is my disc golf scores) I am confident that I will make an impact on the sport at the national level if you do me the favor and vote for me. I know that the competition for votes is tough, and I respect and admire those that are running as well. I also know that I have a strong acumen to handle the differences that a diverse board and organization must deal with. These traits will help us all as we continue to move forward.

I ask that you look hard at who you will vote for as this impacts the sport that we are all so passionate about. I am a very loud voice at many times, but I am also a very tactful negotiator at bringing pieces of varying factions together for the benefit of the whole. This diplomacy skill set that I bring will enable the PDGA to continue to grow in certain areas that it must, and yet alter the landscape from some of the status-quo that has hindered our development.

I will not have all the answers, but I promise to take each scenario with the care and precision that I have with our community here in Kansas City. I ask that you entrust me with the ability I feel I have to help us all continue to put our sport in a positive light, and watch it grow.

I once again will ask for your vote, and appreciate all that you can do to help. Voting is a function of that, so if you do not agree with me, please still vote and show you care!

You can call or PM with any additional questions.

Thanks,

Jack
913-485-5123
[email protected]

Glad to see you are running Jack, and I like your ideas about new blood and trying to keep things moving forward - but unless my Daughter and the other 2 Junior girls get the trophies that were promised to them at the KC Worlds last year, you probably will not get those votes or their PDGA member parents either - and it makes me wonder about your abilities to negotiate with other BOD members - when the KC Club you were a part of can't even work out a solution for 3 trophies (even when I offered to pay for it myself several times).

That's just my opinion of course, and maybe the other families patience lasts longer than 11 months - but mine stopped on June 28th when this years Am Worlds started.

Sincerely,
Keith Johnson
Father of Future World Champion Lorelei Johnson #13697

Keith sorry you feel that way. I believe I asked you to work with the Trophy ( www.allstaryeswecan.com -Brenda ) company that we used in order to make this happen. I do not remember promising any trophies though I may have (or Brenda who was on stage at the time ) said we can see what we can work out. With budgets out of line and expenses over what the expectations were some items went through the cracks. I again ask that you contact All Star awards if you want to buy trophies for the girls. Oversights happen in large events and things do fall through the cracks, I can only apologize and offer the contact which I believe I did in the past.

At any rate if you feel that is enough to warrant not voting for me, I completely understand the logic behind that decision and don't discredit the choice at all. I will not put anyone else under the bus but I believe that the decision was made to change divisions after we had already ordered trophies. An event of that magnitude and expense requires thorough advance notification. Giving notice 7/18 that her division was going to change when we had already ordered the trophies for the division the 7/15 made it very impossible to alter, we waited as long as we could.

I believe that we already "broke" the rules by allowing a few 5-somes in the Jr. pool division to accomodate late Jr's, and ensure that no one was left out. I was under the impression from e-mail conversations that this was taken care of back in (October intially) January when this was brought to my attention. As I indicated then, I will indicate it again(at worlds) now, those divisions that had only 3 people would only have one trophy.

Again Keith sorry to put it out there like this, but changing a division after orders are made make it darn near impossible to plan for. The largest ever disc golf tournament is surely something that required planning and advanced notification.

In some respects though I do believe that the wording in future PDGA worlds contracts will incorporate a type of award for all jr level players. SO this problem has hopefully been rectified in future worlds by the PDGA staff as well who agreed this should not have happened! (Addie proposed a solid idea!)

I know that I shared the information with Wayne back in October as well to contact Brenda directly, and I thought that information was shared with you as well in January. Again if it wasn't I am sorry.

I will however stand by the statement that I made when this was brought up privately with you. Reminding everyone that I am a father of an 11 yr old daughter and a 4 yr old daughter. I do not think that the PDGA should get in the habit of awarding trophies to 1-person divisions. I think that adhering to the rule that you need to have 4 (if not at least 3) to comprise a division, planning and awarding a trophy to a division that "does not meet requirements" is not something that the body should do. It does unfortunately put into a scenario that our sport needs more people in the age demo graphics to happen to make it, and even more so with girls. My daughter last year could have done the under 10 girls but told me she didnt want to play all week long, so I didn't have her do something she wanted to. I had planned on having her and her 2 other cousins play which would have filled that division component.

There were some snafu's with the awards and the awards were more expensive than I knew after I saw our balance with them. I blame myself for not following through on the oversight of all the costs, and am completely responsible for quite a few errors that happened. I have held myself accountable for the worlds in more ways than I can admit here. It was tough and there were many mistakes. Overwhelmingly though most people enjoyed it, and most people will remember the positives. In this case it can't be done. All I can do is say sorry I messed up by not following up with the award company to ensure that your order went through.

Again I understand your reasoning for not voting for me if you choose to do so based on this.

Sorry for the long winded response, I probably should of pm'd it to Keith directly, but if he wants to call me out on it, I appreciate the chance to respond.

No ill will on my end though Keith. Again sorry to have let you, Wayne and the girls down.

Jack

http://www.pdga.com/files/documents/2010_BOD_Candidate_Statements.pdf

Th other nominees in case you did not see Brian's post....I will say this though Theo should realize that Kansas City hosted the largest disc golf event ever, not Des Moines, though Des Moines and K-Zoo did great jobs, I had the chance to help with Des Moines in some areas, not so much with K-Zoo (outside of marshalling).....

Hopefully Charlotte will break the record in 2012!

What three current board members' positions are up for election?

"The three current board members whose terms are up are Rick Rothstein, Cris Bellinger, and Matt Gillis and none have chosen to run for re-election."

Jack,

I realize that you had asked me to talk to the Trophy lady - which I did on 3 occassions - and she also promised that they would be made (as she had promised to the girls and parents on stage at the Awards ceremony) - I have dealt with PDGA HQ, Rick, you and Brenda - but I later got the same response from her that I got from you and others involved. No trophies being made even with my offer to pay for them.
You have apologized and I accept the apology, but I was letting you know that the job of the TD is not just passing the buck sometimes.

When I was TD for AM Worlds in Miami in 2002 I had the misfortune of having the host hotel call me in the middle of MAY (2 months before Worlds) and tell me that the deal and contract we signed after 9/11 was going to have to be changed - as a convention that had been booking there for 15 years decided to rebook their cancelled Event because "travel was getting better now" and so I would have to be moved. The contract only stated that they would have to find "suitable locations to host the rooms and banquet space requested and be within 15% of the price quoted".
Well of course the rooms were $10 per night more and instead of going to the players and asking them to foot the bill which a smart person would have done - I kept my WORD to the players that they would only pay the rate that was told to them 6 months earlier. 811 room nights later, and the 2002 AM worlds became the ONLY AM Worlds in PDGA history to lose money (MY OWN MONEY by the way) - but I kept my word to the players (the majority I had never met before or ever have seen again) which meant more to me.
So I have a different standard I hold TD's to on what they (or their staff) say about Events I attend.

In my opinion if you or your staff promise something to anyone (especially 3 girls under 13 years of age) YOU PERSONALLY (as the TD of record) NEED to find a way to make it happen - especially if it isn't gonna cost you a thing. Yes they couldn't be pre-planned for, but the girls weren't promised them on PRE PLANNING - they were promised AT THE AWARDS CEREMONY. By the way, my daughter was in a 3 person division (the largest girls division) - and the SAME SIZE as the boys under 10 pre-planned division (which all got trophies) and started this controversy in the first place.

That's what I find disappointing in your posts - you are presenting yourself as someone who can make things happen, and I'm pointing out that because of this one case that you should just rephrase that to say you can make MOST things happen (for truth in advertising).

I know that there is tons of things that go on behind the scenes at Events that 99% of the disc golf world knows nothing about - but sometimes the things you can control and choose to let slide, are the ones that those of us who have done the same thing will call BS on.

I will again reiterate that it would be nice to get the trophy one day and even if you would just release the Jpeg of the trophy artwork and a picture of the finished trophies - I could get a local trophy shop to construct a similar looking one that would work just fine.

Thanks for your reply, and thanks in advance for anything you can or are willing to do, and good luck in the election.

I'm pretty sure that 4-6 votes won't decide the top 3 spots. :)

Keith Johnson

They might they might.....Again sorry that the manufacturer of the trophies couldn't get it done. I thought that the PDGA had also handled this accordingly in January. I will see what I can do to fix it Keith....Brenda is out all week, so itll be next week before I can get back to her on this.

I imagine that sine the order was so large that the setup is impossible to replicate for a fraction of the price to accomodate a trophie as we had created. However I will see what I can come up with by working with her on it.

Sorry again, but thanks for the notes, again sorry to spend PDGA Board time responding to this.

Everyone please have a great 4th of July weekend!

Thanks for looking into to it and for anything you can do to help resolve it.

I know the costs of 3 trophies will not be same as doing them all at once, but that's why I asked about the jpeg and picture as a "replica facsimile" trophy could be made for a fraction of the cost and mean just as much to the girls.

Voting continues til the end of JULY, so there is still time to "sway the Johnson votes" ;)

I hope everyone also has a good weekend, and my PDGA dues help pay for this board, so I have NO problems spending time typing on it, and don't consider it a waste of anyone's else's time. :)