This episode we are joined by Nova Politte, a disc golfer and multi-time champion of the FP50 Masters World Championships! Co-hosted by Tulsa Douglas and Luisa Neves.
In this episode, Nova talks about how the PDGA's recent decision effectively banned trans women from playing at high levels of disc golf. She gets into how she started playing disc golf and how the decision has affected her as a trans player herself. She also talks about the relationships she's built in the sport. Then, she wraps up by talking about action items the community can take to fight back against the decision and help make disc golf a more inclusive space.
Share the Air also has some news: our sponsor NUTC has opened registration for its camp for the summer of 2023! If you or someone you know is interested in attending camp this summer, check out NUTC here!
This is the sixth episode of Season 3 of Share the Air. To listen to previous guests, check out our Season 1 and 2 episodes wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to hear even more of us, check out our Patreon page, where you can listen to bonus content every two weeks, as well as access other cool benefits! We have a number of bonus episode out, filled with new interviews, thoughtful discussions, great stories, and extra content that we couldn't fit into the original episodes. Also, if you want to rep some sweet Share the Air gear, check out our gear store, courtesy of VC Ultimate! For more information on upcoming episodes, follow us on our socials: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Share the Air is hosted by Tulsa Douglas and Luisa Neves. It is planned, edited, and produced by Tulsa Douglas, Luisa Neves, and Tim Bobrowski. Share the Air's music is by Grey Devlin and Christopher Hernandez. Share the Air is sponsored by the National Ultimate Training Camp, VC Ultimate, and the Centre for Applied Neuroscience.
[00:00:00] Luisa: hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Share the Air. For today's episode, we're continuing our conversation about trans rights and the eradication of trans rights, in disc golf. So a couple weeks ago we spoke with Ella Hansen about her phenomenal and skyrocketing career, in disc golf.
[00:00:26] Luisa: And part of that conversation, one of the things that we talked about was the PGA's recent, ruling, which effectively banned trans women from being able to compete, in the highest tier of disc golf.
[00:00:39] Luisa: that was an awesome conversation. Tulsa and I certainly learned a lot. We hope that all of our listeners did as well. but, Tulsa, Ella and I are three cis women talking about. this current event. So in the weeks after, Ella's episode was released, we had another disc golfer, Nova Polit, reach out to us and asked to speak with us.
[00:00:59] Tulsa: We wanna thank Nova for reaching out to speak with us and share her story and experiences. As a trans woman in Disc golf, it's really important for us to hear what her experience is like. We learned a lot and we wanna continue supporting her and other trans women in the DISC golf community as much as we. And then just a quick update since we recorded this conversation with Nova, Just recently, Natalie Ryan filed a lawsuit against the PD g A for prohibiting trans women from competing in the FPO division. On the pro tour saying that her rights as a woman in the state of California are being violated.
[00:01:38] Luisa: according to California.
[00:01:39] Luisa: All women should have full and equal access to any sort of accommodations, facilities, et cetera. Under the, I believe it's the California's Unroof Civil Rights Act. so Natalie Ryan is claiming that the P D G A, is violating that in this ruling, in barring trans women from playing in any majors and or pro tour events.
[00:01:59] Luisa: We and Nova talk about this in the episode, and Nova talks about the GoFundMe that Natalie Ryan is hosting, in order to help pay for a lot of these legal fees.
[00:02:09] Tulsa: So keep listening to hear how you can support Natalie Nova and other trans women in the disc golf community.
[00:02:16] Luisa: And with that, please enjoy our conversation with Nova.
[00:02:37] Tulsa: We're excited to be joined by another disc golfer today on chair of the year. We welcome Nova Polit. Nova grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and dabbled in a bunch of sports before she started playing disc golf in 2015.
[00:02:48] Tulsa: Nova went pro after her first season and is a two time FP 50 world champion, winning in 2021 and 2022. She's currently sponsored by M V P Disk Sports and Maverick Disk Golf and lives with her wife Kimberly in St. Joseph, Missouri. Welcome, Nova.
[00:03:04] Nova: Thank you. Glad to be here. Excited to be here. It's been a rough month and a half. That's led me here, but I'm ready to tell the story.
[00:03:12] Tulsa: We're excited to have you here.
[00:03:14] Tulsa: Okay. So we usually get started by asking people how they got into Ultimate, but because you are a guest who hasn't played Ultimate, can you briefly give it listeners just a quick intro of how you got into Disc golf?
[00:03:29] Nova: I can, and actually Ultimate was started in like what, 78, 79, something like that. Cuz there was like this weird hype right as it started. And I remember my elementary school gym teacher made us do it once and I thought it was weird, but that is like a very old memory. I'm gonna throw that in if that's all
[00:03:46] Luisa: Yeah, definitely. You ended up with another disc sport at the end, so
[00:03:50] Tulsa: yeah.
[00:03:52] Luisa: Yeah. So how did you get started Playing disc golf?
[00:03:55] Nova: Yeah. Oddly enough, it was something that I had filed away from a long time ago when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I was on a ride in the family car and we went past a park where people were playing disc golf. And I saw that and I thought, well, that looks kind of interesting.
[00:04:10] Nova: I threw Frisbees around as a child, so I had a grasp on what was going on. I was like, oh, hey, that's golf with Frisbees. Okay. And then I filed it away, and then I lived pretty much the rest of my life. And then one morning, apropo of nothing early in 2015, I was just in the middle of my routine and I thought, Hey, I wonder if that Frisbee golf is still a thing.
[00:04:35] Nova: So literally outta nowhere, no idea. So I looked on Wikipedia, saw that it was in fact still a thing called disc golf and. I read the Wiki article, read the rules, found a website full of disc golf courses. Found the one nearest to me and it turns out I literally lived across the street from the nearest disc golf course.
[00:04:54] Nova: It was just behind a tree line so I couldn't see it. So I got the starter pack of three discs, which is typical for disc golf, and went across the street and printed up a paper scorecard cuz I'm a dork and played my first round of disc golf all by myself with the rules I'd read online and I've still have that scorecard and I've gotten better and, I was hooked.
[00:05:18] Nova: Weirdly enough, I had a brush with Ultimate when I was like eight or nine years old, 19 78, 19 79, somewhere around there. I think there was like a little bit of a craze as the sport was invented, I'm not sure. And our gym teacher got out the big Frisbee and kind of showed us ultimate with the the pivot like you're playing basketball and the take no more than three steps when you catch and stop and for an eight or nine year old.
[00:05:41] Nova: It seemed really complicated to me and I kind of passed on it, so sorry.
[00:05:47] Tulsa: I love that story. That's so, cool that it just, you were just reminded of this memory of seeing people play from years before and then found a course right near you. That's awesome.
[00:05:58] Nova: Yep. True story. I went back and followed the geography of that drive we were taking so that I could remember what park we were going past and I remembered about what time of year it was and. It's not far from where I live now. So I looked up who likely would've been playing in the community of disc golfers in the city about that time, and I said, Hey, y'all, 1983, August, if you were playing at Swope Park on whole eight and nine, I saw you out the window in my car, and then I forgot about you for 30 years.
[00:06:33] Tulsa: I love that. That's some great digging
[00:06:37] Luisa: I think almost, it's not surprising given that you even kept the scorecard. You sort of knew that disc golf was gonna be important. That's awesome.
[00:06:45] Nova: I don't know why. It just, it looked really fun, but it wasn't the kind of fun that I was encouraged to have. I was, I was in a team sports kind of family, so being out there, just throwing Frisbees into the basket, I had, I think, the correct instinct at the time that it would not be well received. So I just kept that to myself.
[00:07:05] Nova: I didn't, I didn't say,
[00:07:06] Luisa: Hmm. Interesting. So what do you, if, if, if it was different from the sports that you had played, what do you think? What has it been about? Disc golf that's been the thing to not just pull you in, but also to have you turn it into a bit more of a lifestyle and, and decide to go pro and everything.
[00:07:24] Nova: The people easily. Making friends as an adult is hard, especially once uh, college is done and it's time to get on with life. It's one of the biggest challenges a lot of young adults face. And I did not have a lot of friends through my young adult life because I too had that difficulty.
[00:07:41] Nova: But I took up disc golf in 2015, so I was 45 and. Since then, and like immediately after that, in those years, I have made more and better friends just in the sphere of disc golf than I had like in the rest of my adult life combined up to that point. So it's definitely the people that are keeping me coming back.
[00:08:01] Nova: And we'll put a pin in that because a little later on we're gonna get into why I didn't just quit disc golf a minute ago. And again, it's to stay for the people. The other thing is it's got a really low skill floor. Getting started is easy, it's not super frustrating. I mean, a person's not gonna be good at it when they start, let's make no mistake.
[00:08:22] Nova: But the progress is easy to see it happening, and the skill ceiling is very high. So there's a lot of room to develop more and more complicated shots to become more accurate, to get greater and greater mastery of the sport. So It's like chess, I guess It's a sea that, you know, a net can drink from and you know, an elephant can bathe in it.
[00:08:43] Luisa: Mm.
[00:08:44] Tulsa: Yeah, that's one of the pieces I think that is appealing to me. progress is measurable. You know, you can play the same course and you can see improvement in your score and in the shots that you're making and stuff. And I think that's a piece that we don't have an ultimate, that is definitely appealing about disc golf
[00:09:03] Luisa: so obviously Nova. an ultimate podcast. We wouldn't really know much about Disc golf if it even hadn't been for our friend Ella Hansen coming on the show and, and
[00:09:22] Tulsa: And Jenna Weiner
[00:09:23] Luisa: And Jen Weiner, that is true. And Jen
[00:09:25] Nova: Right. They're, they, they bridge
[00:09:27] Nova: that gap.
[00:09:28] Luisa: So can you tell us a little bit about your decision to reach out to us and ask to have a conversation with us?
[00:09:35] Luisa: Because you are the first pure dis golfer that we've had on the show.
[00:09:40] Nova: Sure. And uh, I'm not gonna lie, as a ambassador of just disc golf, I'm a little nervous. Please don't kick me down a well. But uh, honestly, it was uh, was was your interview with uh, Ella Hansen. I listened to that. And you touched on the no good terrible thing that the P D G A did, right about the time that you were interviewing her anyway, and her opinion of the subject, although the decision hadn't been released at the time of the interview, if I understand correctly.
[00:10:05] Nova: So it wasn't a conversation that was centered around what had happened, but now that it had happened and I'm one of the people who is most directly affected by it, I thought, well, I've got something to say. And then in the podcast, I believe either you said or you posted, if you think you have something to say about this, reach out to us.
[00:10:26] Nova: And I was like, well, okay, I can follow instructions. So I did.
[00:10:30] Tulsa: That's awesome. We are definitely happy to hear from you and happy to get to share your, your story and experience experiences on our show. I'm wondering if, for people that are pretty stuck in the ultimate world, could you provide a brief explanation for people about the pg g's recent ruling in kind of like any context that you think is important for listeners?
[00:10:55] Nova: yeah, yeah. Buckle in. We'll give you the view from 35,000 feet before we get into the details, that's for sure. So gonna have to do a little history first because it gives context to what's going on. In 2003, the International Olympic commission came up with what they called their Stockholm consensus for transgender players in Olympic sports.
[00:11:15] Nova: And it was pretty much just b postsurgery and. Not great very medical list in trans terms, but it was a start. And then everything stayed pretty quiet and the world did not end. And there was no rush of transgender Olympians running in there for the easy gold for a couple of decades. Still haven't been by the way.
[00:11:37] Nova: And then in 2015, the International Olympic Committee, after 12 years of operating under the Stockholm consensus, changed the policy to something a little more restrictive, which was that a transgender athlete, and I'm sorry, trans men, but this topic is gonna be focused around trans women because that's what I'm an expert in.
[00:12:00] Nova: More about that later. But the new standard in 2015 was that the. Transgender female athlete had to have a blood testosterone level below 10 nanomole per liter, which is a very generous threshold and had to be um, on uh, hormone therapy, which suppresses testosterone for at least 12 months prior to competition.
[00:12:24] Nova: And that's not bad. And the reason I mentioned what the I ooc was up to is that disc golf, the PD g a, the Professional Disc Golf Association was following along with what the I O C said because the PD G is a very small organization with not a lot of expertise in this matter. So if the I O C had a policy, they figured, well, the IOCs got money and doctors and researchers, so why not?
[00:12:50] Nova: And that's what they did. Now this was about the time that I started playing disc golf. And I wanted to be sure that I was doing it right. At this point I was about 12 years post-surgery and 15 years post. Beginning transition. So no testosterone to be found anywhere, but I still wanted to make sure I was playing by the rules.
[00:13:07] Nova: I didn't want to come into a sport and be a rule breaker. So I looked up their policy online and it was just it was the old Stockholm position of just, be post-surgery. And I'm like, cool, I got that. So yeah, I signed up for the pdj. I got my membership card and I'm like, cool, I'm good.
[00:13:22] Nova: And nobody said boo. And that's how I was competing. I was a happy disc golfer for a long time. Then in the IOC said, you know, this uh, 10 NALs per liter threshold is a little on the high side, and 12 months may not be enough time to fully suppress testosterone. Question mark. Some agree, some disagree.
[00:13:44] Nova: So they came up with a new policy, which was. No policy. Their policy was to kick the decision down to the individual member sports. Each sports governing body was now on their own. And this was a bit of a catastrophe because instead of having one policy for all of sports, now you've got, you know, a hundred or 200 or 300 individual sporting bodies that may not have the expertise on hand winging it, and it's not great. That was early 2022. By June of 2022, fea Federation International, Tik Athletic uh, the, the, the swimming people. They they published their new policy, which essentially amounted to a ban at the elite level unless somebody had the good sense to transition before the age of 12, which
[00:14:32] Nova: put a pin in that.
[00:14:33] Nova: We'll get back to that later.
[00:14:34] Luisa: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:35] Nova: And then, The P D G A also took a little time trying to figure out what they were gonna do about it. And in December of 2022, they published their new policy. So we're getting back to the now, which was that in general, a transgender player male to female, as to have below two nanomole per liter of testosterone in their bloodstream, and have this documented for a period of 24 months by blood testing. So first off, from a variety of sources the general consensus is that the. Typical range of testosterone in the bloodstream for cisgender women runs from about 0.5 to about 2.4 animals per liter.
[00:15:22] Nova: And the PDJ set their threshold at two, which makes it very strict because a transgender woman could have testosterone level that is within the typical cyst range, but be above the cutoff. So they're asking for it to be lower than typical. Just for reference, I had mine tested and it was 0.52, so pretty much at the floor. The other problem was they wanted 24 months of backdated blood tests with no grace period to compete, effective January 1st, 2023,
[00:15:57] Nova: which is a few weeks ago as of this recording date the problem is I'm not clairvoyant.
[00:16:03] Tulsa: Yeah.
[00:16:03] Nova: I don't, I don't, I don't have a time machine or a crystal ball. So in December of 2020, I did not peer forward in time two years and see this coming and think, wait, I'd better start getting these blood tests. And then in an article published on Ulta World, under the Disc golf subheading, a representative of the P D G A came in a few days after this disastrous policy to clarify a few things. And one of the questions which was asked was, is there any kind of grace period or grandfather clause inappropriate, but whatever.
[00:16:37] Nova: And uh, the answer was no. So I was frustrated by this because for someone who doesn't have the physical equipment to make testosterone, to put it gently, and hasn't had such for about 17 years, no, wait, wait, sorry. What year is this? Excuse me, 20 years. Actually we're coming up on the 20th anniversary in just a few days.
[00:17:00] Nova: Happy birthday. But uh, so as someone who hasn't, I'm just gonna say as someone who hasn't had testes for 20 years, testing the level of testosterone and in my bloodstream was quite possibly the lowest priority of all the priorities in my life. It just doesn't rate, why would I? It's like looking for the level of krypton kryptonite in your blood.
[00:17:21] Nova: You don't do it. So I didn't have two years worth of backdated receipts, obviously. So I sent the medical committee of the pd g a, an email which said Hey guys. I'm not clear Voyant. So this policy is absurd on its face. I want to compete in 2023 and y'all know I'm transgender. So you know that bell can't be on rung.
[00:17:41] Nova: I can't just, I can't just sneak in. So what do I do? Did you just ban me for two years until I can get two years worth of backdated receipts? When just a few weeks ago I was okay to compete and they sent me back an email and they're like, no, no, you just need one blood test. So already a problem. But yeah, go get one blood test for testosterone that shows that you're below two per liter and a letter from your physician.
[00:18:08] Nova: Actually, it was a letter from one of my physicians is how they put it, as if I have multiple physicians. which indicated that in their expert medical opinion, based on my anatomical history, that they think it's probably been at or below two animals per liter for the last 24 months. Barring any outside interference. So frustrating, but whatever. So I made an appointment with my doctor and I had to explain all this to my doctor because this is so abnormal. And my doctor is a specialist in transgender women's health, and she was absolutely flabbergasted by this and is not at all happy with the medical committee or the PD g a, but you know, she wanted to help me out.
[00:18:48] Nova: So uh, the nurse at the office, took a sample of blood outta my arm and we sent it off to the lab and yeah, 0.52. And then I, coached her a little bit on, you know, where to send the email and that it needs to mention that in her opinion, I'm good to go for the last 24 months.
[00:19:04] Nova: And I sent all that in to the PD g a and they got back to me with another note that was like, oh there's one more thing and I'm paraphrasing here. We also need documentation of, your surgery. And I was like, you mean the one I had 20
[00:19:18] Nova: years
[00:19:19] Nova: ago.
[00:19:22] Nova: But
[00:19:23] Tulsa: Huh?
[00:19:24] Nova: lucky for me lucky unlucky, I guess this is that, fortunately, unfortunately, comic a lot of legal stuff kind of hinges on a note from a surgeon saying they did the deed um, as far as getting documentation, driver's license, passport, birth certificate update, depending on your jurisdiction.
[00:19:42] Nova: So I had such a letter because I changed all my documents 20 years ago with that letter as supporting evidence. So I dug it out of the back of my filing cabinet, blew the dust off it, and sent a scanned copy of it to the PD g a and then they got back to me just a few weeks ago and said, okay, you're good to compete now.
[00:20:01] Nova: And the thing of it is, if I had never told them that I was transgender in the first place back when I signed up in 2015, and if I had been living an unrevealed life, they wouldn't have known, and they had no mechanism in place to test for this, to screen for this. It's not like there's a form a person has to fill out when they join up that says, I certified that I'm cisgender.
[00:20:26] Nova: You sign up for the pd g a, you check F on the form. And they go, okay, yeah, f but since I had mentioned that I was transgender, well that puts me in a bind. So someone who hasn't revealed that their transgender doesn't have to jump through these hoops, but if they're caught out,
[00:20:41] Tulsa: Yeah.
[00:20:42] Nova: if they're caught out and they knew about the policy, then it could be argued that they're flouting it. it puts undisclosed transgender people in a double bind, and it creates the environment for a witch.
[00:20:55] Tulsa: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:56] Nova: as uh, Ella Hansen uh, will attest. There were people who were making trends, accusations at her during the 2022 season. And the P G A has sort of created an environment where this witch hunt activity is only going to increase, I think.
[00:21:13] Luisa: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:13] Nova: And so that's sort of the history of the policy how it's affected me. And I do wanna backtrack just a little bit. If we wanna do a deep dive and just go through the policy line by line, we can transgender men have a very, very short section at the beginning of the policy, which is just that if you're transitioning from female to male, as soon as you start taking testosterone, you're ineligible to play in the women's divisions.
[00:21:37] Nova: And then that's just like the first paragraph and then the next. Page and a half of the document is the myriad ways that transgender women are excluded. Oh, byebye, I told you all that to tell you this. All the hoops I went through, the $500 worth of testing I just did in the last month. When you count office visits in the cost of the lab test, that's a $300 lab test, by the way, I just looked it up before we came to the interview.
[00:22:03] Nova: All of that does not get me into the elite level or playing in women's open at major tournaments, which are the largest tournaments of the year. Because I did not transition before the age of 12 or before puberty. I am banned from elite level events permanently regardless of surgical status, blood tests, notes from doctors, et cetera.
[00:22:27] Nova: So I can only compete at what are called a tiers, which are not as high as elite level and below and. I can only compete in majors in the age protected divisions. They've created this sort of part-time female status and stuck me firmly into it. So depending on the tournament, I may or may not be female.
[00:22:49] Luisa: Wow.
[00:22:50] Nova: It is a mess.
[00:22:52] Luisa: Nova, I am one. Thank you so much for sharing all that and providing all that context. I'm so sorry that, that you're going through this right now. I did not know that, that the policy had restricted you from being able to compete at a certain tier level. I thought it was just whether or not you could play competitive disc golf at.
[00:23:14] Nova: Yeah. Yeah. And uh, It's really frustrating to me because last year I played in four Elite series events and I had planned on playing in four this year, and now I can't, and I'm old and I'm not as good as the 20 somethings. So when I play open with, with the youngsters, I get whooped. I'm donating my entry fee into the prize pool.
[00:23:39] Nova: But these are really good tournaments. They're very well run. I'm very happy to be there. It's a great experience. And now I can't even show up and donate which is frustrating. And this is a twofold knee jerk reaction. It's partly it's the culture war, which I'm sure your audience is well aware that transgender athletes and transgender children and transgender people in general are under a astonishing attack just in the past few months and. Also there was Natalie Ryan, a prominent transgender dis golfer who won an elite series tournament late in the season last year. And that this, no, you know, good for her but it did galvanize people and sort of create the impression of a crisis in the minds of people who are looking for a crisis, which boo on them, I suppose.
[00:24:30] Tulsa: Yeah. That kind of gets at some of my next question, which is when you look at that policy and there's a short section for trans men and then there's all of this for trans women, and then the piece of trans women not getting to compete unless you transition before the age of 12 at this level and above.
[00:24:51] Tulsa: can you talk a little bit about like what the threat is or like what the fear, Yeah. Why is it so targeted at trans women?
[00:24:58] Nova: mean in disc golf war, in the culture at large.
[00:25:02] Tulsa: I know it's a big question, so
[00:25:04] Tulsa: in whatever way you wanna take it.
[00:25:06] Nova: yeah, there is a culture war going on right now, and we are the feared minority of choice at the moment. The right wing culture, warriors always frame it as in a very disgustingly patriarchal way as protecting our women and. A century ago they, they had to, they had to protect their women from African American men. And that kept, you know, I mean, some places it's still going on. That's that's not a solved problem. And then in uh, fifties and sixties there was a bit of a red slash gay panic where you had to protect your children from, from the gay men.
[00:25:42] Nova: And then we had a satanic panic. Uh, I had to protect the children from, I don't know, weirdos. But also it was always, the other is always framed as some kind of existential threat to women or girls. and generally speaking, the other is not, it's always a witch hunt. They're, they're always looking for, Boogieman.
[00:26:03] Nova: And right now transgender women are the, threat of choice. And in the case of women's athletics, it's really easy to frame it that way. If you accept it as axiomatic, transgender women are not women, because then you've got invaders coming into the sport where your girls or your women, and I know I keep saying it in the possessive tense, I'm using their words.
[00:26:30] Nova: It's gross. I'm sorry. You know, these invaders are coming into take something away. From your women or your girls, and you have to protect them. And it's very frustrating because transgender women are women. I'm a woman, and the notion that women have to be protected from me is absurd because of all the threats women face, I'm probably the lowest one. I al almost all y'all could take me. I'd like to remind you that my testosterone is 0.52 nanomole per liter. if you look at a bell curve distribution of humans on the, on the testosterone chart, I'm at the bottom. You know, I'm, I'm weak. All y'all are swol compared to me.
[00:27:11] Luisa: Share the Air will be right back, but first here's a quick word from our sponsors.
[00:27:16] Tulsa: Share the Air is sponsored by the National Ultimate Training Camp. Located in Western Massachusetts. NUTC is the longest running ultimate sleepover camp in the country. It has also gone international, hosting camps and teaching clinics all over the globe. With the most talented coaches in the world, NUTC is teaching ultimate for the next generation. Learn from the best at NUTC.
[00:27:38] Luisa: Share the Air is also sponsored by VC ultimate. VC has been producing custom uniforms and performance apparel since 1998. that proudly puts values and community before profit, VC is the world's best source for quality design and all your ultimate needs. You can support VC and rep Share the Air jerseys by checking out our team store at vcultimate.com.
[00:28:00] Tulsa: So one thing that we had discussed briefly previously was that, well, so you mentioned early on that one of the big parts of disc golf that you really enjoy and keeps you coming back is the social aspect in the community that you found in disc golf.
[00:28:17] Tulsa: So can you talk a little bit about that community of players and the supportive players and then kind of how that differs from the board of directors that's making these decisions about the trans policies?
[00:28:30] Nova: Yeah, absolutely. For the longest time until this most recent policy was put into place, the board of directors really kind of stayed out of the way of transgender people in disc golf, and that was fine with me. But for, if you look at the PD JS policy and. What the PD g a is doing to transgender players.
[00:28:51] Nova: An a person looking in from the outside would incorrectly assume that the sport must be just terribly unwelcoming and, bigoted and closed minded and discriminatory. But prior to this, my experience with other people whilst playing disc golf has been uniformly positive or neutral.
[00:29:12] Nova: I literally, not once in the time I've been playing disc golf since the spring of 2015, not once has one person ever come up to me at a tournament or on a course and said, Hey, you, you shouldn't be here. This isn't your place. I'm not happy that you're here. Never, not once, but the number of people who are glad to see me, my friends my very close friends. Just people in general is off the charts. It's, I don't wanna say all of them because not everybody is capable of being friendly 24 7. That's not how people work. But I've never had an overtly bad experience due to being transgender while playing disc golf. There's been a little bit of side channel stuff, but that's off the course.
[00:29:59] Nova: When I first started playing disc golf, somebody in the local community docked me, and yeah, they abused access to a police database to uh, find some old records on me and spread my dead name around the community, which and legitimately, I mean, if you're playing in a group of three or four players, and one of them is just often their own land, if they're, if they got earbuds in or if they're just way more into their caddy than they are the rest of the group. You know, is that them being cold to you because they think or know that you're transgender? Or is that just them being them? So you know that that's a them thing. That's not a me thing. I don't internalize that. You know, if somebody has a, a naturally icy demeanor, I don't take that demine that they dislike me.
[00:30:46] Nova: And cuz I don't think that's a healthy point of view. And I don't like assuming things that I don't know for a fact. So, no. The players of DISC golf. Disc golf is an extremely welcoming and inclusive community. It's got a lot of what you would call the hippie mentality from the seventies. Everybody's welcome.
[00:31:05] Nova: If you're a disc golfer and you're weird, you are weird, you know, you're, you're, you're part of the tribe, you know, come, come in, come be weird with us because for the longest time, disc golf was weird. During uh, the Covid Pandemic disc golf entered an era of unprecedented growth. Pdg and member numbers went from being in the, the high five digits, 75,000, 80,000 to well into the, the six figures of 250,000 plus, I
[00:31:33] Nova: think, Correction, I think we're coming up on a quarter mill. And living out here in the middle of the country, the demographic has shifted a little bit. Uh, We've, you know, there's, sports is going up on uh, churches and the middle of the country tends to be a little bit more socially conservative, so there's been a little of that, but not a lot of that.
[00:31:56] Nova: And it's never, ever in your face, walking through the parking lot, you'll see, 10 prius's with co coexist bumper stickers and, you know, 10 Z 97 pickup trucks with 3% or decals on the back window. But on the course, everybody gets along and nobody talks about that stuff. So it's an extremely welcoming sport and I'm absolutely delighted to have spent this much time with it. And given what the board of directors did, some people have left the sport. They said, I cannot be a part of this organization, or I cannot give my membership money, my fees to this organization to do what they did.
[00:32:35] Nova: Or, I cannot pay the $10 non-member fee per tournament to the PD g a to participate in tournaments as a non-member. Or I just don't want to be part of this organization. And some people have walked away from the sport for that reason, and I say, go in peace. I understand why you are, but I'm staying because the board of directors are not the people I come to play disc golf with.
[00:32:58] Nova: I play with my friends, I play with the people who are here. And so that's why I'm staying. I will be damned if I let the pdg, the board of directors at the PD g a, get between me and my friends. They're my friends. You can't have them.
[00:33:11] Luisa:
[00:33:18] Luisa: so, Ella told us a little bit about what she felt. Two, two things. One, what, what, you know, this was before the decision had been formally announced. So Ella sort of gave us what her takes were on you know, what she hoped for and, and what she was hoping to see come from it and everything like that.
[00:33:36] Luisa: But also the fear that this is what the decision would end up being, which it did. Ella also told us a little bit, and this was not so much about this was not so much about this particular decision, it was more just Ella acknowledging that there's all sorts of different identities and folks with, you know, some.
[00:33:53] Luisa: Different to her beliefs
[00:33:55] Nova: yeah.
[00:33:56] Luisa: that that's, you know, we can sort of expect that everywhere we go in this, in this country. But she talked about her experience talking with someone who I believe had a, blue Lives Matter patch on their bag. And she had, she, you know, had a conversation with him about what that meant and felt that she was able to have a more productive conversation talking through this guy's, you know, ways of thinking than necessarily going onto Twitter and, you know, blasting this, this, this one guy.
[00:34:30] Luisa: So I'm curious, what are your thoughts? And because you're talking that you, you're, you're sharing that you have such an incredible supportive community that, you know, there's no possible way for you to walk away from , what do you see happening in the wake of this decision with the discourse about the decision, either, you know, in your own personal tight-knit community versus the disc golf community at large?
[00:34:53] Luisa: I know you've said some folks have made the decision to walk away from the sport, but what's sort of happening in your social media circles, in your social circles in the conversation? What, what's it like now that we're a few weeks out? From the official ruling
[00:35:10] Nova: Well, in my immediate social circle, which is a curated circle of people it's overwhelmingly supportive as you might
[00:35:18] Nova: expect. I keep friends as friends. I, I don't keep enemies as friends. I'm not that machi. But in the larger conversation, that is something I've been keeping my eye on because in the immediate aftermath, in the first few days after the new policy was announced, that was the news and there were articles on Alti World.
[00:35:39] Nova: I was a guest on Smashbox podcast. Streamed on YouTube. And that was all people were talking about. And then since then, it fell off the radar almost immediately. It's been about five, six weeks since then. And I would say of those six weeks, weeks two through six, nobody's really had anything to say about it.
[00:35:59] Nova: If you're not going and looking for a transgender player to find what they're doing to try to comply with the ruling or what they're trying to do to fight it, or just talking about how it makes them feel or how it's affecting them. Or if they're not saying just, I, I quit if this I'm out, try some other sport.
[00:36:18] Nova: We're gonna miss you, Chloe. Then there's no discourse. I watch interview shows with touring pros podcasts that feature touring pros and. It's not a topic of discussion, and I'm not clairvoyant, so I can't say if this is out of fear, of appearing ignorant of a topic that a person is not well educated about, or fear of inadvertently coming down on the wrong side of history and getting canceled for it, or simply the desire to be for all people, which means being as bland as humanly possible.
[00:36:59] Nova: there's been really no talk about it. And this silence from everybody else has been extremely vexing and it's weighed on my mind considerably because. to quote this really good orator from about 50 years ago. Or to paraphrase, I think my greatest disappointment, I confess is not the, the turf or the right wing culture warrior, but the cisgender moderate who just sort of stands back and prefers the false piece of injustice to the sort of tumult of rights being taken, and so, yeah, the, the discourse has been nothing and unfortunately that makes it feel like unless we, very few, handful of people who are very directly affected by it really work our tails off. we don't have this army of supporters behind us. we're kind of like running out to the front to stand up for ourselves, and then we look over our shoulders going, all right, everybody. And then we look and there's, there's nobody there, or very few people there, or just our social circles, you know, our, Facebook followers or our Insta followers or whatever.
[00:38:08] Nova: And it's not so many people, and it's only in proximity to us that we feel the support, you know, and there's nobody who's not directly affected by this is going out there and saying anything of their own volition. And media is no longer talking about it or asking anybody about it. So there's no reason to speak up.
[00:38:31] Nova: And it's very frustrating and it's a very lonesome feeling.
[00:38:36] Luisa: Yeah. Thank you for, for sharing and
[00:38:38] Tulsa: for sharing that. I think that's a. typical pattern of the kind of like ally that's there when the ruling is released, when the bad thing happens, and it's easy to post on social media and then disappear and the, and stop supporting in, in the following weeks, you know? And I really appreciate you sharing your experience and what it feels like, and I think that's a, a really great reminder for folks that support has to be, ongoing and continuous, and doing things when it's hard and not when it's just easy.
[00:39:15] Nova: Absolutely. You know, the support is nice, but the policy is still there and injustice is still being done. It, even though it's no longer news, it's still happening and it will continue to happen until it is rescinded.
[00:39:29] Tulsa: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:30] Luisa: I'm curious, has the, Besides the interview on all two worlds, has the board itself have either individual members or the board as a whole said anything further since, or they're
[00:39:43] Nova: no, they have.
[00:39:44] Luisa: of the silence?
[00:39:46] Nova: I'm going to drift into saying something that I don't know for sure, but I suspect, given what I know about the way board members talk about other things previous to this and the amount of not talking board members have been doing subsequent to this, that I don't know for a fact, but I have, what kind of evidence was Sherlock Holmes into deductive?
[00:40:10] Nova: deductive? I have deductive reasoning that sort of points towards the board might be being quiet on purpose in a concerted effort, or there might be word from on high to keep this quiet because aside from a q and a article on Ulta World, about four days after the uh, announcement of the policy, there's been nothing from anybody on the board.
[00:40:35] Nova: And unfortunately, disc golf media hasn't been helping by pressing for questions, which I get it. It's a small sport and as media, they need to keep access. And if you antagonize your sources, you don't get to have sources anymore. This is why independent media is so important. But I do think that the board is being very mum on this because prior to this it was not hard to get an opinion from somebody on the board about some other matter. Yeah, if somebody wants to go on Altar World and click under the disc golf tab and scroll down to the q and a with the PD g a back in December, it is one of the least informative and most curt sort of QAs ever. It's pretty much uh, we're going to tell you very little, and we're gonna frame it in such a way that we're telling you everything.
[00:41:28] Nova: it was not helpful and condescending and it made the board look really bad, in my opinion, that that's what they came out with for the q and A. This was just sort of a, here's five or six non-answers to your questions. Go away.
[00:41:41] Luisa: Yeah.
[00:41:42] Tulsa: Yeah. I think one question that I have for you, Nova, is about next steps. So I know that there was a, I saw GoFundMe for Natalie Ryan in donating to help her. With a legal fight against this policy, I'm curious what other sorts of, how can people support and push back against this and try and get this policy changed?
[00:42:08] Nova: Yeah. Sure. Well, first thing, keep talking about it. That's the easiest thing to do. Yeah. Natalie Ryan's GoFundMe was at about 12 K out of 20 K which not great, but also not terrible, but without revealing too much if she's. Appears to be on the way to getting some results with the proceeds of that GoFundMe, but it's a work in progress.
[00:42:32] Nova: Nothing is set in stone. I cannot say what's happening. I cannot say what's being done, what's not being done, or who it's being done to. But from my, my discussions with Natalie, things are happening and the money is being used. So I can say that much. I realized I was extremely vague, but it's partly out of privacy that I don't wanna reveal anything.
[00:43:00] Nova: And it's also partly out of, when it comes to legal stuff, even though I'm not a party to what's going on in any legal sense whatsoever, it's still just a bad idea to go around talking about what you're doing on Facebook. when there's a legal thing happening, you know, a good attorney tells you what is it?
[00:43:15] Nova: Uh, Delete Facebook and go hit the gym. so yeah, the, that GoFundMe is still there and the money is being used, so definitely give that a look. I'm gonna be out about 500 bucks for this absolutely pointless blood test. I'll be throwing a GoFundMe up for that once I get the bill. It's medical billing takes forever. So I don't have the bill from the doctor's office yet, but the doctor's office is gonna be about 200 bucks.
[00:43:43] Nova: And I looked online at the, the Quest Diagnostics lab, and their bill from them hasn't come because it's still in the, we sent this to the insurance company and we wanna see what they have to say first phase, but I'm pretty sure my insurance company's gonna go. What on earth are you talking about? We've never seen such a thing.
[00:44:03] Nova: No, we're not paying anything. Why would we? That's ridiculous. So, I'm pretty sure I'm, I'm gonna be throwing up a GoFundMe for about 500 bucks soon-ish. Because people have been asking me, how can we support you? How can we support you? And I appreciate the kind words, but not gonna lie. Some people want to help in more substantial ways and I'm more than willing to help them help out.
[00:44:24] Nova: But yeah. But the main thing is, keep the fire alive. Keep the fire under the P D G A. Some of the board members who voted in favor of this new policy, cuz it was a four three split on the seven member board, some of those four are up for reelection or
[00:44:39] Nova: not this coming July.
[00:44:42] Luisa: When the next when their term ends.
[00:44:45] Nova: Uh, this July elections are every July for a portion of the board and some portion of those who voted for this policy are coming up in July. And in terms of that, I'd like to touch it briefly. The local school board, Qana Wackadoodle Rack Radicalization of local politics, has finally come to the P D G A.
[00:45:09] Nova: We've made it um, we've already got an announced candidate for the board of directors who is a one issue candidate, and her one issue is the ban didn't go far
[00:45:19] Nova: enough
[00:45:20] Luisa: God.
[00:45:22] Nova: because Oh, oh, yeah, no, there's a, there's a split. I, I take a peek at what they're up to because it's important for my wellbeing to know what folks are doing.
[00:45:31] Nova: And this decision from the P D G A upset both sides, they screwed it up so hard. They offended everyone who's in favor of fairness, and that's real fairness. ,
[00:45:45] Nova: not the, not the fake fairness. Yeah. They offended everyone who is in favor of transgender women competing in the female divisions by this ridiculous sort of ban, sort of, not ban, but they also offended all the haters and bigots by not going far enough. So well done, I guess. We'll, we'll see how that plays out, but Yeah, but back to what I was saying, I think we're gonna have a lot of one issue candidates, or. The board of directors this coming July, and it's, it's going to be terrible. as much as I hate election seasons here lately in real politics, the one for the P D G A is just going to be an absolute nightmare.
[00:46:30] Nova: And joy of joy is, it's the election period is done electronically online through an email link that is unique for each member. And those ballots go out on the 1st of July and it runs through the end of July. And the middle of July is when I will be in Flagstaff, Arizona, contesting, trying to get my third consecutive FP 50 world title.
[00:46:52] Nova: So that's gonna make the social environment really fun because part of the ban, the way the ban was structured, even though the World Championship for Women aged 50 and over is a major because it's not an open women major. I can compete in it. So, that's gonna make. Some older Gen X and some boomer ladies who are conservative, very unhappy because I wasn't kicked out of their divisions. I was only kicked out of the divisions with the young, very talented players. so it's, it's an astonishing mess and, and I hate it. Thank you,
[00:47:31] Tulsa: Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot to be dealing with as you're trying to perform and win a world championship.
[00:47:38] Luisa: Defend
[00:47:39] Nova: sure. And Oh, yeah. And, and to circle back to something I said earlier about not having any bad incidents ever on a DISC golf course, I am through side channels, well aware that there is a significant number of the 50, 60, 70 year old player bass who hates
[00:47:58] Luisa: Mm-hmm.
[00:47:58] Nova: that I'm there playing. they've elected an emissary and sent an emissary to have a, talk with me and see if we could iron some things out and get some answers to some questions.
[00:48:11] Nova: And so I sort of justified myself, which is a thing transgender people have to do constantly, defending our existence is, just the background radiation of our lives. So I met with a sort of emissary of the haters and sort of like accounted for myself, I guess, but it was a very opaque process and I have no idea how well my words were received.
[00:48:34] Nova: So I'm gonna be going out to this world championship in the middle of this culture of paranoia. In the middle of this, what's gonna be a wacky board election season, trying to compete my best and dealing with all of this. And looking around at the competitors around me going, you know, which group of people standing in a circle giving me side eye is just really into whatever they're talking about.
[00:49:00] Nova: And I don't know 'em all that well. And which group of people standing around in a circle giving me side eye is doing it because they hate that I'm there. And that's an awkward feeling. And because I'm not a mind reader, I can't tell one from the other.
[00:49:13] Luisa: we talk a lot on this show and in in conversations with both, and Tulsa is definitely more the expert here, but we talk a lot about what it takes to be mentally fit and mentally prepared to be able to perform at your best. And just right now. Even the fact that in the moment you're kind of looking around having to debate who's a friend and who's not, it must be not only so dangerous, but also just so exhausting for you to be able to perform in your sport.
[00:49:43] Nova: it is. Because. I'm aware that at any moment, you know, somebody could say or did something inappropriate. And the rules are if somebody does that, you know, that's it's a courtesy violation. It's a violation of the PD g a bylaws against discrimination, so on and so forth. And it can be a disqualification offense, and it can also be something which is sent into the pd, PD g a disciplinary committee for further review for potential probation or suspension.
[00:50:11] Nova: But if I'm isolated by myself loading up my car and somebody comes by and drops a slur and keeps on walking, it's a, she said, she said situation.
[00:50:19] Tulsa: Mm-hmm.
[00:50:21] Nova: I have had to sort of pregame this possible situation and develop tactics for how I will deal with it or how I will document it should it happen.
[00:50:34] Nova: And I feel like that's something that cisgender people just don't have to deal with.
[00:50:38] Tulsa: Mm-hmm.
[00:50:39] Nova: I'm in the habit for social media purposes and also for form analysis purposes. On my cart full of gear, which I drag around with me, I have a cell phone, which I just use as a camera mounted on a camera mount on the handle.
[00:50:51] Nova: And I just position it so it's facing uh, where I am when I'm throwing and I just hit the play button. Then I go, throw and I hit stop. But I've also thought if I'm just sitting, if we're all sitting there on the bench about to start on the next hole talking about scores or talking about whatever, and somebody starts talking smack, I have to surreptitiously reach up and tap the record button when the camera that's on my cart behind me, just so I can catch that on the down low so that it's not a she said, she said, and I'm pretty sure that's not something cisgender people ever have to worry about having to do. And it's very frustrating wondering. When someone's given me a hard side eye or a animated conversation suddenly becomes muted as I approach what's going on. And it's a, it's a, it's not a great feeling.
[00:51:45] Tulsa: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:46] Nova: Wow, that was a downer. I'm
[00:51:47] Tulsa: No. No. You do not
[00:51:48] Luisa: is, yeah, please. part of this conversation is the fact that we've only had this conversation with CIS folks, and that doesn't carry the same weight.
[00:51:58] Nova: Fair enough. Yeah. I understand that for cis folks, you know, hearing sort of this stuff might be the most traumatic thing that happens in a, the last day or two. But for me, you know, it's, it's just Wednesday, so. I'll, I'll give you a little time to process it, but I, I tend to move through it pretty quickly.
[00:52:16] Luisa: well, we appreciate that even in this moment, you are making space for the CIS folks to figure it out. It's truly, please do not
[00:52:23] Nova: I, we, I, I, I need you. I can't do this alone.
[00:52:28] Luisa: Okay. So Nova, we usually begin to close out episodes with um, some of our repeat questions.
[00:52:42] Luisa: And so the first one that we have for you is what is next for you? We know that you have a couple of these tournaments coming up and what you'll be doing in July, but what else is coming up for you either in disc golf or just in your life?
[00:52:59] Nova: Well, right now my life is disc golf. So that question is already half answered. I, I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. As far as this season goes I'll be competing in a lot more a and b tier tournaments because that's where I'm allowed to play. No DG PTs. I might make a little bit of trouble this summer.
[00:53:20] Nova: There are two tournaments coming up in my region that are qualifiers. D G P T events, they're open to all, including me, but the winner gets an entry to a D G P T Elite
[00:53:36] Luisa: I love that.
[00:53:39] Nova: the naughty part of me wants to enter a tournament like that, do my best. It's not a guarantee. Try to win and just make a little chaos.
[00:53:49] Luisa: I love that. I'm, I'm all for that.
[00:53:52] Nova: thank you. It's, you know, sometimes malicious compliance is the best compliance.
[00:53:58] Luisa: I know that when we had spoken to, to Ella, a lot of your events a lot of the D G P T, did I get
[00:54:06] Luisa: that right?
[00:54:06] Nova: Golf Pro
[00:54:07] Nova: tour.
[00:54:07] Luisa: It's the
[00:54:08] Nova: Yeah. Actually right now, yeah, right now I'm just calling it the D G P because there's no T allowed.
[00:54:16] Luisa: I love that So I know that a lot of these D G P events are, filmed and everything like that, you know, it's televised in a way that Ultimate is not. But are,
[00:54:27] Nova: Live on the Disk golf network?
[00:54:29] Luisa: Are those qualifying events going to be televised?
[00:54:32] Nova: No. No, they will not.
[00:54:34] Luisa: We'll have to follow along on
[00:54:36] Nova: Yeah. And these smaller tournaments that I'll be, I'll be competing at this year. There may be one or two where if I do well and I'm on the lead group, which is not a guarantee I may be on YouTube, but I'm not gonna be on live.
[00:54:50] Luisa: Okay. Good to know. We'll still, we'll follow along then.
[00:54:54] Tulsa: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:55] Nova: Please do. I, I hope I end up somewhere.
[00:54:58] Tulsa: Then the, the second part of the question is, what do you hope is next for the disc golf community?
[00:55:06] Nova: What I would like to see next for the Disc golf community is, and I'm dreaming here, but I would really like to see some sort of unified pushback against the members of the board who have put this terrible policy into place and either raised such a furor that the policy has to be rescinded early.
[00:55:30] Nova: Because in their announcement they said, well, the policy is up for annual discussion based on emerging evidence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I would like to see that moved up to next week.
[00:55:42] Luisa: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:43] Nova: I would like people to be sufficiently upset that the board of directors recognize. The scale of the mega whoopsie that they did and walk it back sooner.
[00:55:54] Nova: I feel like I'm dreaming, but if we could get there, that would be amazing because uh, myself and Natalie Ryan and I could name a dozen other transgender players who are maybe not touring pros or maybe not semi-pros, but playing at all levels of the sport from the top to the bottom who are directly affected by this.
[00:56:14] Nova: Some are sitting out because they don't have a two years worth of blood test receipts. Others are walking away from the sport because they can't support the current board in its configuration. And the sooner that everybody can speak up and get this reversed, the sooner justice will have been achieved for a very tiny minority of people who are very screwed by this.
[00:56:42] Tulsa: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that dream. I think we,
[00:56:47] Nova: And it
[00:56:47] Nova: is,
[00:56:48] Tulsa: we are, well, we love supporting and like pushing four things that sometimes feel like far hopes, but are al also, it's important to envision what we want and try and, and just like think it and name it so that we can work to get there.
[00:57:03] Nova: well, at the very least, it'll uh, if we can keep everybody's eyes on the target, that would be great. anytime somebody mentions, you know, DISC golf or the D G P T or the P D G A, the conversation needs to be, oh, and remember that horrible thing that they did that is still not yet been undone. That's still there. And this isn't one of those situations where we can just pull the knife out three of the six inches and call it a day. The knife's gotta come all the way out of our back on this one.
[00:57:33] Luisa: all the way out and then repaired, I imagine.
[00:57:37] Nova: Absolutely.
[00:57:38] Tulsa: Yeah.
[00:57:47] Nova: So Nova, I know that you have done your research and you know what game is coming up, so
[00:57:55] Nova: here we go. This is my
[00:57:56] Nova: favorite part. I'm very
[00:57:58] Nova: excited Awesome. So we have tried, we've mixed a little bit up to be Disc golf. Does that mean I get 30 seconds to put instead of 10 seconds to stall?
[00:58:07] Tulsa: great
[00:58:07] Tulsa: question. Yes. We should have made like essay questions.
[00:58:13] Nova: Yeah. And And you should know though that in, yeah, nobody enforces that rule. So those 30 seconds can be up to like three minutes. Really?
[00:58:21] Luisa: we'll be incredibly, we usually are generous with our 10 seconds, but we'll make, we'll remind ourselves that you have not stepped on an ultimate field yet. Ends we'll give you, we'll
[00:58:31] Tulsa: I want to, I it, I wanna give it a shot. It looks really fun. Also, I'm 52, so it looks exhausting, but I think unlike most 52 year old ultimate players, I still have my knees and my
[00:58:42] Tulsa: ankles.
[00:58:44] Tulsa: That's true.
[00:58:44] Luisa: Yes, very true.
[00:58:46] Tulsa: And I think
[00:58:46] Tulsa: very quickly
[00:58:47] Tulsa: you could it.
[00:58:48] Tulsa: very quickly you could become a very good thrower and especially polar, I think.
[00:58:53] Nova: I'll, I'll, I'll try and find a club.
[00:58:55] Tulsa: yeah, yeah. Okay, let's get started.
[00:58:59] Luisa: Okay. So for our first question, you can. . I don't know if there's any sort of team.
[00:59:06] Luisa: Yeah, Yeah.
[00:59:07] Luisa: Doubles, right?
[00:59:09] Tulsa: they
[00:59:09] Tulsa: call
[00:59:09] Nova: or card mates.
[00:59:10] Nova: You know, we go out, we go we, we go out in groups of four or
[00:59:14] Luisa: Perfect. Okay, great. I'll ask it. I'll, I'll switch our first question to be that then. So which card mate would you like on the line with you? Who's your gonna be your all-time card mate.
[00:59:25] Nova: on Scoggins. Final answer. She has the best energy, the best spirit. She is unrelentingly, cheerful, and more importantly, humorous. I like people who are just constantly laughing and joking and finding the lighter side of every situation. I get her, she gets me. It's amazing. So happy when I get to see her.
[00:59:47] Tulsa: Yeah, that's, that's the kind of teammate that I like too. Yeah.
[00:59:51] Nova: Mm-hmm.
[00:59:52] Tulsa: your most used emoji
[00:59:56] Nova: Oh, lately I've been uh, I don't use any of them except for one lately I've been trying to bring back the Pacman emoji. If you're, if you're on Facebook, it's colon V hit space and you'll get a little sideways. Pacman I'm trying to bring it back.
[01:00:12] Luisa: Just for any, any situation,
[01:00:15] Nova: Well, it, because of the way the eyes on it are kind of cock-eyed and the smile is off to one side, it looks like it's doing some kind of goofy, sarcastic laugh. And not in a derisive, not in a derisive way, but just sort of in a silly way. And I'm into that because I'm 52 years old. I communicate with capital letters at the beginning of my sentences and punctuation marks at the ends of my sentences.
[01:00:39] Nova: And I understand for most people in the following cohorts, that's very intimidating and comes across as angry. So I throw a, I throw a Pacman on the end of my sentence, and I feel like I'm bridging the gap.
[01:00:51] Luisa: Yeah, you've reassured, reassured a younger generation with the, with the Pacman
[01:00:57] Nova: it's important to be understood.
[01:00:59] Luisa: What's your favorite tournament location?
[01:01:03] Nova: oh Emporia Kansas small college town of about 10,000 people, and they've got like 25 disc golf courses, and they're the headquarters for another company. So their support for disc golf in that town is the charts you show up there. All the businesses have signs or chalks on the sidewalk. There are welcome disc golfers, you know, come in for a discount.
[01:01:26] Nova: We're glad you're here. They all set disc golf baskets out in front of their businesses because they want you to putt to get a free hamburger or make a putt to get 5% off or whatever. And the large tournaments in that town are like weeklong disc golf parties.
[01:01:41] Luisa: That
[01:01:41] Luisa: sounds awesome.
[01:01:42] Tulsa: Yeah. you're really selling me
[01:01:46] Nova: Okay. And because it's such a tiny town, you know, they, they throw a block party at the, in the, in the, in the old little middle American downtown. And yeah, it's like the whole town comes out. It's, we disc golfers. It makes no sense and it's amazing.
[01:02:01] Tulsa: Yeah, that's cool. If you can only have one type of disc, golf disc, what do you pick?
[01:02:07] Nova: Uh, Mid-range because they do everything I can put with them. I can approach the basket with them, I can drive off of the tee box with them. They do everything.
[01:02:19] Luisa: midrange. Gotta remember that. Uh, Can you give us a book, podcast or TV show recommendation?
[01:02:26] Nova: Oh, I'm gonna go with podcast and God, I gotta pull up my list of podcasts. I'm, I'm failing. I'm
[01:02:36] Tulsa: No, you
[01:02:36] Tulsa: started
[01:02:36] Tulsa: you got Yeah.
[01:02:39] Nova: Oh, okay. Good. Oh, that's right. I don't have to be done. I'm gonna go with scathing Atheist featuring no illusions. Uh, Heath, Ethan Wright, Eli Bosnick uh, and Anna Bosnick. And uh, Lucin and they just talk atheism.
[01:02:54] Nova: And it is extremely profane because they're doing the, we're constantly angry about everything thing. So it engages the amygdala. It's a guilty pleasure.
[01:03:07] Tulsa: Oh, that's great. If you could play a round of disc golf with any professional athlete, who would you pick?
[01:03:14] Nova: Oh God, this is the one where I fail, Patrick Mahomes. Just because he can throw anything.
[01:03:22] Luisa: Cool.
[01:03:23] Luisa: What is the best tournament snack?
[01:03:25] Nova: Uh, The free ones that are provided by the organizers. Barring that I carry Grandma Candy,
[01:03:35] Tulsa: What?
[01:03:35] Nova: I'm only fif Grandma Candy. I'm
[01:03:37] Nova: only. Yeah. Of coffee candies tos, those swirly Starburst mints. Yeah, just, the mints I grab from the hotel lobby. Um, Just anything I can get my hands on. I just have a variety of candy in my bag all the time and I'm 52 years old, but in disco golf, that makes me a grandma.
[01:03:56] Nova: And it's a great icebreaker cuz after a couple of holes, maybe people aren't too sure what's going on or there's some tension, I break out the candy and pass it around and just everybody's on, everybody's on board cuz every, everybody's gangsta till the grandma candy comes out.
[01:04:11] Tulsa: So from my knowledge of Disc golf, There are like very specific disks. So what is your current favorite disc?
[01:04:21] Nova: Okay. I'm gonna lose most of your audience. That would be the streamline trace which is manufactured by my sponsor, MVP Disport. It's a driver and. Best way I can describe it is it does the thing very reliably.
[01:04:37] Nova: I have a particular thing I want it to do, and when I wanna do that thing, I take that discount and it will do the
[01:04:42] Nova: thing.
[01:04:44] Nova: Uh, it goes real, it goes really far, and then at the end of the flight it does a thing and I know it's gonna do the thing. So I know where it's gonna go. And I like that it's predictable.
[01:04:53] Luisa: That's awesome. Very, especially, you know, so many other things you're thinking about. The consistency is cool. I kind
[01:04:58] Tulsa: yeah.
[01:04:59] Luisa: always wish some of my throws were like that. You know,
[01:05:02] Nova: oh my God. Yeah. Ultimate discs are a nightmare to throw. I, a couple of years ago, I made a YouTube video for Laps where I played a nine hole course, a shorter one too. Maybe 200, 250 foot holes using only an ultimate disc. And it is, Even though I'm terrible and even though it was ridiculously embarrassing, I published it anyway just because I wanted to show that, just cuz I can throw the little ones, the size of a dinner plate does not guarantee that I can throw the big one made by ultra star or disc craft.
[01:05:34] Nova: it's, it's hard.
[01:05:35] Nova: I have a lot of respect for y'all throwing those things the way you do because I throw 'em and they just, cork screw, there's,
[01:05:42] Luisa: I have, I have, I have so much uh, so much admiration for you throwing disc golf discs. I think the, the number one thing that we've talked about when we've talked to disc golfers who also play Ultimate, is that you have to throw with, you have to throw discal discs, almost counterintuitively to how you throw a Frisbee.
[01:06:01] Luisa: There's like a lot more, what is it, Tulsa? I think it's io. An IO curve to
[01:06:04] Tulsa: Yeah. And you all call it like Anheuser and Heiser or
[01:06:08] Nova: Yeah, we, yeah, I think, I think what y'all call inside out and outside in, we call Heiser and Anheuser, not respectively. I, I can't
[01:06:15] Nova: translate that one to one, but I think, I think those are the
[01:06:17] Nova: terms. Yeah.
[01:06:18] Nova: Oh, and the other thing is uh, disc golf discs are thrown flat or even a little
[01:06:22] Tulsa: Yes. Yes. So that's what I was gonna say. I,
[01:06:27] Nova: and, and yeah, I, I tried to do that with a, with an ultimate disc, and I hit the ground like 10 feet in front of me was
[01:06:33] Tulsa: it's so funny because I told Ella that I have been trying to play with my brother some, some disc golf. And I asked her for a tip and she was like, aim at the ground. Like from ultimate, you're so used to aiming upwards and that's not gonna work with disc golf discs. So that's funny that you say that.
[01:06:50] Tulsa:
[01:06:50] Tulsa: I also believe that there are things, I have seen some ultimate players who have gone and played disc golf and have added to their ability to throw the disc far and have more control, be a better puller and ultimate. So I feel like there definitely are things about like throwing mechanics that ultimate players can learn from throwing disc golf discs.
[01:07:10] Nova: Oh, I
[01:07:11] Nova: But
[01:07:12] Nova: I don't, I haven't experienced it. That's just my observation. , I mean, Ella could throw far before she went to disc golf.
[01:07:18] Nova: So
[01:07:19] Luisa: true.
[01:07:20] Luisa: Okay. Your final ten second stall slash three minute stall question. Who is someone that you're grateful for?
[01:07:27] Nova: oh, must pass, Kimberly.
[01:07:29] Luisa: Awesome.
[01:07:31] Nova: It was uh, 2008 uh, we got married. And at the time I said, I could think of no better plan for the rest of my life than to spend it with you.
[01:07:44] Nova: And so far it's worked out really well. It turns out that that was right and I, I still stand by that assessment now.
[01:07:53] Tulsa: that's sweet.
[01:07:53] Luisa: in some things.
[01:07:54] Tulsa: Yeah.
[01:07:55] Nova: So I, I didn't have to be, she made it obvious that she was
[01:07:59] Tulsa: Mm. That's a nice note to end on.
[01:08:03] Nova: Oh.
[01:08:05] Luisa: You did it 10 seconds.
[01:08:06] Luisa: Oh,
[01:08:06] Tulsa: Yeah.
[01:08:07] Nova: Oh my God. I win.
[01:08:09] Luisa: can
[01:08:09] Tulsa: ready for Ultimate
[01:08:10] Tulsa: now?
[01:08:10] Luisa: Ultimate Player
[01:08:10] Luisa: now. Yeah.
[01:08:11] Nova: do I, is there some sort of prize? Do I get an oped,
[01:08:15] Luisa: We did, when we first started the show, we talked about having some sort of a, like a leaderboard and doing something and we've just.
[01:08:22] Tulsa: We're, we're generous. So it's
[01:08:24] Luisa: Yeah, we've made it fun,
[01:08:26] Nova: No, it's, it's better for fun.
[01:08:29] Nova: I'm so happy to be here, by the way, because I don't have to explain things like, what is cisgendered?
[01:08:38] Nova: I lo I love being in a place, I love being in a place or a space where I don't have to do the 1 0 1 level stuff, where that's just assumed. That feels really good. So thank you all for being awesome.
[01:08:48] Luisa: Oh, absolutely. And we're, you know, we're very much like, we're still learning. We're obviously, you know, two, six folks that only have so much understanding between us. But yeah, we've, we really find that sort of space important where, you know, we can come with even a little bit of a shared language to then get to what's the next conversation.
[01:09:10] Luisa: So thank you so much for, you know, helping us have that deeper conversation and explaining things for us as well. In this hour. We
[01:09:20] Nova: Ah, nope, Nope. Ah, no problem. No problem. Part of part of me deciding to live openly at the beginning of this past year was having these kinds of conversations,
[01:09:32] Tulsa: Mm-hmm.
[01:09:34] Nova: having it not be something that is mysterious and misunderstood.
[01:09:38] Luisa: Yeah, totally. Naming it has been, yeah. Step one.
[01:09:43] Nova: Well, and, and, and there's a lot of power in it. I own it. It's mine.
[01:09:46] Luisa: Yeah,
[01:09:47] Nova: I, other people don't get to define what I'm doing if I'm just out there saying what I'm doing. It, it, there's, there's no ambiguity there. It doesn't, it doesn't create a space for malevolent people to create their own narrative.
[01:10:03] Luisa: Oh, I love
[01:10:03] Nova: I mean, they've, they've, they've already got that, but they, but they're not in my space doing it too.
[01:10:08] Tulsa: Yeah.
[01:10:09] Luisa: Thank you Nova so much for joining us for this episode. We're so appreciative of you. Reaching out is so exciting to have someone who doesn't play Ultimate and to still have, you know, just as deep of a conversation and be able to talk about our sports and find similarities in them and all those sorts of things.
[01:10:24] Luisa: So we're so thankful for you to come on the show and share your story.
[01:10:28] Nova: Delighted to have been here. I hope I've been a good ambassador from the strange land of disc golf.
[01:10:36] Luisa: Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. If you like the podcast and want to support us, here are a few things that you can do.
[01:10:45] Tulsa: you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook sharetheairpodcast and on Twitter sharetheairpod
[01:10:51] Luisa: You can also rate and review us, and most importantly, subscribe to our podcasts wherever you listen.
[01:10:56] Tulsa: And if you want to show more support or you just can't get enough of share the air, you can check out our Patrion at patreon.com/sharetheair If you're interested in repping some, share the air gear, check out our VC ultimate store at vcultimate.com
[01:11:09] Luisa: If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us team@sharetheirpodcast.com. We'd love to hear from you.
[01:11:14] Tulsa: Thanks so much for listening.
[01:11:17] Luisa: Share the Air is recorded and edited by Tulsa Douglas and Luisa Neves. It is planned and produced by Tulsa Douglas, Luisa, Neves, and Tim Bobrowski.
[01:11:25] Tulsa: Share. The Air's music is by Grey Devlin and Christopher Hernandez.
[01:11:29] Luisa: Finally, thanks again to our sponsors, NUTC, VC ultimate, and the Centre for Applied Neuroscience.