Grant Zellner PDGA:
One of the half dozen running for your vote in the 2023 PDGA Board of Directors elections, Timothy Petrie from where in Georgia, Timothy?

Timothy Petrea:
Tifton, Georgia.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Tifton, Georgia, Timothy is PDGA number three, four, seven, five, six. He's a 16 year PDGA member and by profession, a parks and recreation director there in Tifton, Georgia. Tim, thanks for joining me today. Why don't you start with a little more background and a little bit about your involvement over the years in your local disc golf community?

Timothy Petrea:
All right. I've been playing disc golf since early 2000. Back when I started playing, there was no YouTube to learn how to throw

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Hehehehe

Timothy Petrea:
certain kind of shots or anything like that. So I bought my first set from Walmart, believe it or not, and started playing there, fell in love with the game. I actually started playing up in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, was the first course I ever played. First of all, foremost, I love the game. Then by default because I wanted to compete, I got involved with the PDGA and that's after going up to the International Disc Golf Center and actually meeting Brian Graham and Jason up there years ago and then got involved in the PDGA and then because I work in recreation, I started doing tournaments, started to develop some new courses. that you put a course in there, you get positive traffic to the community, it's going to make that park better. So, you know, I've been a part of that with park design, with club management, helping to support local clubs at the different communities I've been involved in. And you know, just being a part of PDGA is, you know, again, by default, it was the right thing to do because it fits with competition for what we do. And you know, I'm a big fan of it and if you look at my rating and I encourage you not to, I'm very passionate about the game. It's just sometimes I don't get as much time to get out there and play so my rating goes down. And I'm happy to be, I've been representing Innova for the last couple of years, not because of my ability to play, but because of my ability to promote the sport and to help grow the game. even thankful for that opportunity.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Well, when it comes to promoting the sport and growing the game, obviously, the PDGA is a member based organization and we are always looking for ways to grow membership, in some cases by reaching audiences that maybe haven't been as well reached as they could be talking about youth, talking about underserved demographics and talking about international growth around the world. Can you talk about what you will focus on as a board member when it comes to increasing and retaining members at the PDGA?

Timothy Petrea:
Well, a lot of it falls right in line with what I do in the parks and rec world. I operate off a program plan. And it's part of that program plan. One of the things that we're looking at is equity in program. You know, are we reaching only a certain part of our population by this particular activity and what are the dynamics, you know, what are the numbers? Do we have a diverse program? And if we do not have a diverse program, what's keeping us from having a diverse program? So that's where looking at the back end of a program to say, okay, let's do the evaluations properly. If we don't have a diverse program that represents our population, what can we do differently to do that? So a lot of evaluation goes into putting a good program together. and then recycling that program to another year. So I'm very big on doing the evaluation of what we're already doing and seeing how we can do better to reach our underserved populations in the years to come. And what better to do is to bring some parks and rec professionals to the table, maybe through some forums and things like that to help say, okay, this is how you could get your message across to our population.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Can you give me any other examples of a time maybe when you've identified a program that wasn't reaching a certain audience and what you were able to do in order to reach that audience?

Timothy Petrea:
Gosh, just this last year, we, you know, we with our sports programs here in Tiff County, we you know, we saw a large amount of growth this year because I started looking again how we had been doing it. And just because you've been doing it a certain way doesn't mean you need to continue to do it that certain way. Well, we started doing all of our programming school based. We have eight elementary schools. So now if a child plays for our program. and there are enough participants in that particular elementary school, then they play for that elementary school team. We're a little above a rural community in South Georgia. Our population, I believe, is definitely higher than 45,000, 50,000 now. So our numbers are fairly high, but basically they went in basketball from 140 kids participating to 364 kids participating in basketball this year. that the excitement continued to baseball. So what it's doing now, it's doing more than just creating an excitement for the sports, but it's creating a community pride. These people are glad to be wearing their school's uniform. And in turn, they're glad to be wearing our recreation department uniform and more kids are getting active. In turn, parents, grandparents are happy. They're coming out and watching. So it's becoming an amazing community affair. and it's enjoyable to do my job.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Good stuff. Well, congrats on that. That sounds like that's a lot of fun for that community and surrounding area. You talked about competition just a little bit in there and facilitating good competition, good competitive events for the community to participate in. In Disc Golf, of course, there are a lot of moving parts to the PDGA's mandate of creating more events and improving always the quality of those events. We're talking about taking events to new areas. We're talking about increasing the supply of events to meet demand. We all have heard plenty of stories of disc golf tournaments that are closed within just, it seems, moments of when they open because registration fills up so quickly. Another element that we talk about is trying to get more directors to be willing to direct events. So when it comes to that whole topic of events, Tim, what... What kinds of things do you want to bring to the board and champion? Should you be elected as a board member at the PDGA?

Timothy Petrea:
Education, education, education. Basically, you know, PDGA is a good clearinghouse currently. That if I need to find something out about course design or how to run a tournament, various things like that, it's easy to go to. The thing that I wanna make even better is that if there's a tournament director that wants to do it, and let's say just for instance, me as a recreation director, I wanna provide it as a program. how do I become a tournament director for Disc Golf? And then we offer that as a program, then I should be able to bring people to the website or take people through a Zoom class where we show them these are the steps. This is why it's important to one, align yourself with the PDGA and get it sanctioned. One, from the insurance standpoint, your coverage should something go wrong, but do all the educating when it comes to that. Why is it important that we have a sanctioned event. Why can't we just have a non-sanctioned event? You know, and you know, people don't understand even the insurance standpoint beyond that, but as well as the support that comes from the tournament manager now. But going through that process with them, how to do, you know, just, and this is not just with a disc golf tournament, but with any tournament, the more work you do up front before that event starts, the better that event is. once it gets going and you as a tournament director can enjoy some of it providing you don't have any problems with the tournament. But doing the front end stuff and nowadays tournament manager makes it so much easier than it used to be when I got started.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
You are a Parks and Recs director, and it seems to me that you would have some unique insight when it comes to things like course creation, working with a community, a government entity, a civic organization, whatever, in order to actually get the various permissions and things involved in putting courses in. Talk about how you can translate that experience into, you know, a unique candidacy for the board.

Timothy Petrea:
One of the, sometimes I get the opportunity to teach at our state conference. Last year I taught a class on the island of misfit parks. Remember from the old Rudolph,

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Yeah!

Timothy Petrea:
the island of misfit toys, I kind of brought that in to basically show not just with disc golf course design, but with other various things like picnic tables put in the craziest place and, all kinds of other amenities that are there and just forgotten about. One of my experiences has been, and I was able to bring this into that class, where one, we had a particular park that we put a disc golf course in that actually helped to clean up the drug traffic. And I talked about the design elements of that, about where we were putting the course, where we were putting the kiosk for the course and how we were gonna try to bring positive traffic in there, but also how you should be able to stand at certain points and see. the activity throughout the whole course to help kind of clean up some of that activity there. But, you know, some of the other things like within that course design, being able to design that course where it can be maintained easy, you know, a lot of folks will just come in and they'll just put a park in. You know, there are good, there are great designers out there that they make their money doing course design. And I believe we're in a better world than that, than it used to be. It used to be people would just come slap down some baskets, do some Echo T-pads or do some other kind of thing and just say, well, this is all we have the budget for. And I've been in that world. But now the course design, there are things that you can do from a maintenance standpoint, and then you hand the park those standards after it's over with. I've got a buddy of mine up in North Georgia that He put three courses in in the Cartersville area of Georgia. He did a great job of including the park people in the design and in the build of that. So that way when the course was finished and he stepped away as a designer, the park people knew how to take ownership of the course. So, and that to me, that's the information that I bring to the table and wanna make a stronger relationship between the parks and rec agencies. and the disc golf club so that there is not a disconnect and that there are design standards and there are maintenance standards to continue so that way, you know, from a planning standpoint, it gets better. But then too, once that course gets put in, once the maintenance is taken care of, there needs to be some continued communication to keep that club and that disc golf course on the radar. So when those baskets start tearing up, the capital improvement project list includes disc golf as a priority to continue doing the upgrades on it as time will permit and as money will permit because we all know that baskets are going to get messed up by Mother Nature or sometimes by people just coming in and bashing them with a baseball bat or whatever, treat them like they're a grill. I've seen all kinds of things.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Ha!

Timothy Petrea:
is continued priority on the budget once you get that in. And those communications need to be made from both sides because I've seen the clubs say, well, those maintenance guys, those parks and rec people, and they'll say it in a negative connotation. Or then sometimes then there's the parks people are like, oh, those disc golfers. Well, there needs to be a better communication. And this is where from a PDGA standpoint, we can go to the national parks and rec conferences. And we can. offer to teach classes or be a part of some forums. Go to the state conferences and do that because every year state conferences for Parks and Rec, the Parks and Rec professionals are meeting and they wanna hear from us. They're begging for classes and that's where we can maybe come up with a varied amount of things that we can do to keep disc golf as a viable option in our Parks and Rec agencies.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Unique insights there, Tim. Thanks for that. But before we wrap this interview up, I want to make sure I give you an opportunity now to venture into any other priorities or issues, or maybe think of it in terms of problems that you would like to solve, things that are on your radar right now, that if you are elected to the PGA board of directors, you will, these are causes that you will champion. And this is, if someone votes for you, they can rest assured. that you're going to focus on these things. Are there any, any, any priorities that come to mind?

Timothy Petrea:
Well, I'm going back to when I lived in North Carolina and I worked in a park there. I was fortunate enough to be a part of a board of a nonprofit that was the Clean Water Initiative for our county. And I went from being a board member to being the chairman of the board. And I recognize that as chairman of the board, one of my main jobs was to help oversee the executive director and then make sure that the organization was, that he had everything he needed to run the organization. None of the other staff. answered to me, it was just that executive director the way the board was set up. I understood my part. But I also understood that I needed to have those communications with him so that he could tell me what else we needed to do. And then we made sure that we had our yearly board retreats and that we put our priorities out there. Me being a part of a board, I understand that I've become a part of a bigger process and that when it's working, my goal is that we as a act as one board, not as individual board members. I think that's extremely important when it comes to a board. That's one of the, to me, the initiatives that I want to bring to the table. But then two, you know, there's a couple of them, you know, to me that are very important from a competitive side. I want to see more junior opportunities and more diverse opportunities. And I think a good way to do that is by approaching the National Federation of High School Sports. to continue keeping disc golf as an option of their mind to make a scholastic sport at the middle school and the high school levels throughout the nation. But I know that's gonna take some lobbying. So, and I think that puts two initiatives together is to make sure that we're reaching underserved populations and that we're becoming a more diverse sport. And then that's just one of the options to do it. But then... Two is the other thing is to make sure that our education stays up to date. That we're getting everything we need to put the stuff out there so that as our growing population happens, you know, I'm a big fan of the pros. I believe that they have their place, but I don't want to forget about the amateurs. I want to make sure that we are making the advances that we need to make in the amateur competition that some of them will eventually graduate through the pros, but also that they don't feel like they've been hindered and that they're getting growth processes too.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
Again, unique insights from you, Tim. Thanks for that. Before I let you go, a final, call it a campaign statement from you before we let you go and let the voters decide.

Timothy Petrea:
Well, this is my fourth year attempting this, and I'm very passionate about this. I don't want to give up on this opportunity. I want to be a part of the PDGA board and be able to do my part. If anybody knows me, they've been around me. They know that there's one extreme thing that, you know, if they look on my wall, I've got a clock that's disc off clock on my wall here. I've got all the things in my office. I work in recreation, but the most important, one of the most important statements to me is play for the sake of play. If at the end of the day I happen to win, fantastic. But play matters for the sake of play. That's it.

Grant Zellner PDGA:
That's it. Tim Petrie, PDGA number 34756, running for your vote in the 2023 PDGA Board of Directors elections. Thank you, Tim.

Timothy Petrea:
Thank you.