We are very excited to announce that Josh Rosa is officially joining the Disc Revolution management team as our Director of Competition!!! With our growth and the growth of the sport over the last year we realized we needed help. Disc Revolution needed someone that had the experience and drive to “get it done” in our amazing community. Josh was the first and last name on the list to join our team to help fill this need.
Please see our interview with Josh below and learn a little more about our newest team member.
What would you like everyone in the disc golf community to know about you?
Well hello everyone, my name is Josh Rosa and I am proud to be brought on by Disc Revolution to assist them as their director of competition. My daytime job is as the Operations Manager for Tech For Less, a local business that has been here for 20+ years and I have been with them the entire time. I started off as a shipping supervisor, worked my way up to Ops Manager, and through my time with them, I have built up a good amount of history in dealing with different personalities and coming up with solutions to problems on the fly. We have a few certifications and as a business, there are regulations we have to follow, so I am familiar with procedures and processes that must be followed.
How does that translate to disc golf? When it comes to competition, you are going to want to have someone that has the answers, or if they don’t have the answers, they come up with a plan that gets us to a good spot. Someone that can iron out details and solve issues before they even arise. I think I have shown through the various events I have thrown this year that the communication is there, the problem solving is mostly positive, and most players walk away having a good time.
I am also an avid comic book collector and I always wanted to be the hero, but instead I grew up to be the dork. But I am the dork that tries to keep fair play in mind, equality for everyone on the playing field, and we all have a great time doing it.
How long have you been playing disc golf? What brought you to the sport?
I started off back in the early 00’s, but that was a real, real casual play. The person that got me into this was Flip Graham, who some of the more seasoned players may recognize. If I play Widefield with Flip, he lets me know he had a hand in building that course. Every. Time. Haha, but I love Flip, he’s good guy. He got some co-workers and I involved and we went out shooting at the old HP course. I continued to play off and on from then but it wasn’t until 2017 that I got more on board with it. The scale was going the wrong way, the pounds were piling up and I needed something physical to do, hence disc golf. About that time, I saw Jomez and started seeing the coverage of the sport and I got hooked on it, again. I am also one of those people that if I get hooked on something, I really get hooked on it. I got the tee shirts, I got the bag, I got the cart, I got it all… except the talent, lol
What was the first event you ran? Thoughts on how it turned out? Lessons learned?
The first event I helped with was How the West Was Won 2021 with Brandon Nelon. Brandon does a great job of getting things set up, and he has been doing this for a while so it could almost be done on autopilot. It turned out great, as always. Lessons I learned from that tho is be accurate and take your time. Poor guy was trying to fill out scores on cards and I am over here fumbling with math. I still feel bad about that… but he let me help out with the 3D and we (Jesse Otto and I) smashed it out the park.
As far as my first event I personally ran, it was the flex event at Widefield in June. It turned out really great for being the first one, and we got a lot of people through there. The things I learned is that player meeting emails are a necessity, so you don’t have to keep giving the same spiel every 10 minutes. Always have a backup person, there are times you need to take care of something and really can’t leave tournament central alone. I did have Steven Gauthier there so that was helpful, especially considering I was doing a raffle, too. Know what time you need to put into an event and make sure you budget accordingly, don’t over tax yourself, too. This event, I went all out and made a bunch of different modifications to the course. Then afterwards, I had to clean up and I can tell you I was spent. Last thing I learned was always communicate everything as best you can. As you can tell from my answers, I am a bit of a talker and rambler, but I always try to make sure you know exactly where I am coming from. If you leave anything vague, people get confused. Confusion leads to anger. Anger leads to the darkside. (told you I was a dork)
What made you want to start running events for the local disc golf community?
My main reason is because it seemed like the Springs was a bit of dry spot for competition over the past couple of years. We had Aviary Fools, State Games and Clash, but other than that, not much was going on. Meanwhile both Kyle Harrigan and Brandon, and some others, are running these great events almost on a monthly to bi-monthly basis up north in the Denver area. If I wanted to play a rated round, I’d have to wake up ungodly early, drive up I-25 (yuck) and play 2 rounds. Then come back down and be dead for the rest of the night. Colorado Springs has a disc golf community that I felt was often overlooked, so I stepped up and started doing flexes. The first one I threw, I was unsure if anyone was going to show up. I believe we had close to 80 people come through and most of the feedback was “This is great, I wanted to do tournaments but just couldn’t find the time to get there” or it was something about money, or time and money. That feeling of giving back to the community and giving the opportunity for people to enjoy a rated round felt great. Doing regular massive events like the Throwdown or Clash, and watching people walk away smiling, that feels great.
What are your goals as the Director of Competition for Disc Revolution?
To continue what I started with J719, bring fair and fun competition to the Colorado Springs and surrounding area. I also want to help build the brand of Disc Revolution and get that to be a well known staple of the disc golf community. I am grateful to have met Casey and Sarah, they are wonderful people, and they have been my partner in AM payouts since the first flex. I want to take their business to the next level and assist them in finding success amongst the community, which will in turn hopefully allow me to find success myself. “When one of us shines, all of us shines” – Moira Rose. It’d be awesome if we could start to make Colorado Springs a destination town like Emporia, as I feel that we are a small enough big town to really bring in some national attention. Baby steps first, we are hoping to increase the amount of B-Tier tournaments in this town, along with various flexes.
What is your favorite disc? Favorite manufacturer? Favorite pro player? Why?
My favorite disc has to be the Innova Sidewinder. It was the first real disc that I felt I could control and throw, and so if I ever pick it up, I feel relatively comfortable I am going to throw it the way I want. I have my Watchmen logo’d G-Star Sidewinder that is a staple of my bag and it is by far my favorite to toss. I have always been partial to Innova but I like a lot of things that I am seeing out of Lat 64. I am really not beholden to any manufacturer and throw a pretty mixed bag. Mostly discs that all have the same flight characteristics but different manufacturers because I am still a n00b, lol.
Nate Sexton has got to be my favorite pro player. He has a great wit about him, very sharp and can do some pretty brutal take downs. The fact that he also took a sensible approach and shut his season down due to the pandemic, placing his family first, was a real strong indication of the type of guy he seems to be. Not everyone is going to agree on what has happened over the past few years, but seeing him at a point in his career where he was top tier basically take a step back out of caution and protecting his loved ones, that says something to me, as a person and as a father. I know if my little girl ever got sick, I would be devastated.
What are your favorite hobbies outside of disc golf?
The first hobby that comes to mind for me is that I have started back into PC gaming. Last year, during the winter months, I didn’t shut down my season and where I still played tournaments in some really suspect weather. There was a tournament at Ponderosa where the starting temperature was -6 or something like that, and while it was a fun experience, I feel like I am getting too old for that… stuff. This year is going to be a bit different, I am going to stay inside where it’s nice and warm, look at the weather and if it gets nice enough, I’ll get out. I’ve also started a workout routine at the gym so my hobby now is to be able to PC Game without getting a pc gamer body. I like to also draw (badly), write (poorly) and take photos (they a’ight).
I’ll go ahead and close this up now because it feels like I have written a novel to everyone out there. I am pretty dang excited for this chapter of my disc golf life, and I am looking forward to working with the ever lovely Scogins and the Disc Revolution brand. Look out for some great quality events next year and beyond, as we are going to bring the heat!
Josh Rosa
Director of Competition
Disc Revolution