summary
Cosmic Dave shares his journey in disc golf and the creation of Cosmic Disc Golf. He talks about the challenges of starting a pro shop and the impact he wanted to make in the disc golf community. He discusses the potential closure of Stafford Woods and his efforts to keep it open. Cosmic Dave also shares his expansion into running monthly flex tournaments at Maple Hill and Meadowbrook, as well as his plans for Cosmic Health, which focuses on the health benefits of disc golf. He emphasizes the importance of creating a positive and inclusive disc golf community.
keywords
disc golf, Cosmic Disc Golf, pro shop, Stafford Woods, tournaments, flex tournaments, Maple Hill, Meadowbrook, Cosmic Health, clinics, Cosmic merch, disc golf companies, partnership, Disc Golf Pro Tour takeaways Cosmic Dave's love for disc golf led him to start Cosmic Disc Golf and create a pro shop to serve the disc golf community. He is passionate about spreading the sport and creating a positive and inclusive disc golf community. Cosmic Dave organizes monthly flex tournaments at Maple Hill and Meadowbrook to provide more opportunities for players to compete and enjoy the sport. He is also focused on the health benefits of disc golf and aims to introduce the sport to new populations through Cosmic Health. Cosmic Dave values partnerships with other disc golf companies and organizations to further promote the sport and create a vibrant disc golf culture.
Music: Strange Bop by contreloup
(upbeat music) - Welcome, welcome, welcome back. This is Disc Golf Daily Sunday Editions where we interview movers and shakers in the Disc Golf World. Here on this episode, we got Fish is number one fan, the man with the plan who single-handedly saves Stafford Woods, hopefully, Cosmic Dave, how are we doing? - Good, how are you? - Great, live and large, live and life. - In the best band you can be. (laughs) - All right, Cosmic, just tell us about kind of your start in Disc Golf before you even started Cosmic Disc Golf and we'll get into that after. - Sure. - So, I was blindsided by Disc Golf even though I played it once in 1988 when I was in college. I came across it just driving past Stafford Woods one day and decided to take a shot and pull up. We went there and my wife and I and a very kind gentleman took us in and showed us this lovely sport. And by the 12th home, I had my first real birdie putt and that's all it took. I was hooked. I wanted to make that bird. I felt the love, I felt the juice and yeah, my life changed right then and there. I started playing Disc Golf once, twice, two, three, four, five, six, seven days a week and couldn't get enough of it. I was out of work at the time and had all the time in the world to explore my love of this new addiction. - So, how long after you found Disc Golf, did you start cosmic Disc Golf? - So, I found Disc Golf in, I guess, April of 2018. And then I went to Augusta, Georgia, and went down to visit the International Disc Golf Center in 2019 and saw my first ever Disc Golf Pro Shop. And I was like, wow, this is what we need. And I was super inspired to make it happen in our area. The only thing that we had was Dick's Sporting Goods to shop for discs in person. And I felt that we really needed a Pro Shop. So, I originally offered it to another company. I offered my office to somebody else to create a Disc Golf store in my space, but he was too far away. So, about a year later, I decided to take matters into my own hands. And in October 2020, I created a company called Cosmic Disc Golf and we opened our doors to the public on January 23rd, 2021. - So, tell us more about Cosmic Disc Golf and what it was in the earlier days and what your plan was, and then we'll get further into what you're doing now. - Sure, originally I was thinking, I just want to create a shop for people to be able to touch plastic in their hands before buying it. I had a horrible experience on Amazon that inspired me to change things and make it better for people and hang on one second, sorry. - See you later. Okay, sorry. - Handy's back. - Handy's back, moving and shaking. So, yeah, I created the shop originally just to have people just to give people the ability to shop in person and it was great. I was able to serve the public really well in creating a shop at a time during COVID when you couldn't find anything online and it worked out really well. It became very quickly apparent to me that I wanted to do more in disc golf and act on some of the things that I had seen out there in the disc golf world, which was creating tournaments and sponsoring players and having an impact spreading the sport to other people. And it just grew upon itself. Once I started throwing events, players wanted to be sponsored by Cosmic. I was just always trying to create good vibes and happy times for people and it resonated with a lot of local players and yeah, I've been able to really make an impact in the area. - Yeah, for sure. And do you have any updates on Stafford Woods? Is it officially closing? 'Cause you mentioned it earlier. Which, by the way, people don't know. It's the number one course in New Jersey that's been threatened to be shut down like seven times in the past two years or something like that, so. - Yeah. Yeah, the current situation is it's in a review by the DEP. DEP had ordered it to be dismantled and shut down a few months ago after an initial appeal from last year. But right now we are waiting for a decision from them. There's currently a stay to keep it open till the end of September. But for example, my cosmic open is scheduled for October 5th and 6th and it's in jeopardy potentially. So until we have a ruling, everyone's just kind of crossing our fingers. There's a plan in place. We made a proposal to try and keep it open, but now it's in the hands of the DEP. - Got it. So let's get more into kind of your new cosmic ventures. As you start to kind of, I don't wanna say like straying away from the pro shop, but it seems to not be the number one priority as you're trying to make cosmic global in a new way. So let's talk about first, let's talk about the maple monthly flexes you've been doing and how you've expanded to Meadowbrook. - Yeah, it's great. So as much joy as I got creating events around here, I realized that there was a need for more events in other areas as well. So I had initially contacted Steve Dodge at Maple Hill. I looked online to figure out what the top courses in America were and I started at the top and I reached out to Steve at 26 minutes into a phone call, we were friends and about a year later, we started our partnership over at Maple Hill and we've been running monthly flex tournaments at Maple Hill since 2022. This is our third year and it's been great. It really has allowed people who want to play on Fridays who don't have time on the weekends or want to start their weekends early to get a jump on it and we're able to create some good vibes up in Massachusetts and other places to bring our cosmicness to another region, allow the people to get some cosmic merch, enjoy the good vibes and yeah, I just wanna do more of that. People have been very thankful along the way, appreciative of what we've done and it's inspired me to really do more of that. At the Northeast Disc Golf Expo two years ago, I got to meet David Chandler from Meadowbrook Orchards and he was very interested to create a series of flex tournaments at Meadowbrook as well. We also did Tower Ridge last year and I'm in talks with other courses to do a similar program tailored to each course's desires but to engage their population in a cosmic event and yeah, get our good happy vibes out there. - So for anyone listening that might wanna have a cosmic event of their own, tell them what the perks are for going through you, for running these and why they should as a TD. - Yeah, it's great. So we worked with the course owners and cater it to their specific needs. So with Maple Hill, for example, Friday was the slower day so we created something to make it one of the busiest days. And for the shop owners, for the course owners and the tournament, the event runners, it makes sense because they are getting traffic, they are getting sales to their store and for the TVs that run my events and other locations that are not affiliated with a pro shop, we pay the tournament directors directly to run our events. So it's a real good way for us to drive traffic to a course or to create an event when it's needed, where it's needed and for the people running them, they get to benefit financially and we get to benefit by spreading our merch and vibes out to the people. So yeah, it's a win, win, win all around. - Yeah, yeah, I've played in a few cosmic events and they've been really fun. You get some cool cosmic merch and a little token to the store that, poker chip token, $10. - Yeah, it's a gift shop. - Yes. So tell us, you have a few other vendors and Steve Dodge said you have something coming down the pipeline that you're excited about if you can tell us about that. - So I'm really excited about everything, disc golf related, but specifically I'm excited about cosmic health, which is a division of the company that focuses on the health benefits of disc golf and I'm trying to bring this to various facilities and various populations of people who are stuck in locations with limited recreational options and introduce them to disc golf and get people moving and doing something new and something different, something that's easy, that's fun, that engages people in a different way. I've had the benefit of witnessing so many positive changes in our local disc golf community. I've seen overweight people lose weight. I've seen depressed people get happy. I've seen anti-social people make friends and I've seen people who were kind of like apathetic about the world create a new purpose and a new life that involves disc golf. It's really inspired a lot of people and I love being that catalyst and to have cosmic be an important part of somebody's life or just introduce disc golf to other people as they come really important to me. - Yeah, that's awesome. Sounds like you got a cool little unique plan that I feel like isn't really done in disc golf much. Everyone talks about the healing properties just walking around in nature. So it's cool that there's a program to actually get people that might not know about disc golf out there to enjoy it and enjoy themselves just being out in nature. - Yeah, and also we plan on running more clinics. We have Cosmic Flight School. We just booked a lesson this morning or have become a hub for people who want to better their game. They reach out to us and book with a pro teacher who helps them elevate their game and it's not just new players. Guy who booked this morning is actually an advanced or sometimes pro player who's just looking to get to the next level. And it's been really good to be a part of that and growing other people's games. The other thing we did was, and I just did this yesterday, is we run clinics for the benefit of other people as well. We are the course affiliated partner for the Paul McBeth Foundation for the course that's in Camden, New Jersey. And yesterday I ran a clinic over at their day camp and got to introduce the sport to 10 new kids. And we will be also exhibiting at their festival trying to engage a larger swath of the population and expand the visibility. - Yeah, that's awesome. Is there any other exciting things you got going on? I know Cosmic is ever shape shifting. - Yes, yes, so as we move on, I try and keep everything within the world of disc golf. So when we do player packs, we engage with other disc golf companies, like disc golf pins and T-box socks. I've been working closely with, oh, we also did mitten bags coming soon. - Oh, is that going to be players back for causing monthly? - Maybe, yes. And yeah, Guardian Aliens is another company that I've become close with, been working on bringing some of their artwork to Cosmic and making cosmic more of a disc golf destination in general, looking to hopefully trap some pros on their way between MVP, open at Maple Hill on their way down to USDGC because we are right off the highway, only four and a half hours from Maple. It's an easy stop, but I'm looking to create some sort of a player's party or a place where we could do a fly mart and get the players some money on their way and put some cash in their pockets and give the fans around here a thrill to see pros because New Jersey's a very underserved disc golf population in the bottom five or usually in the bottom five states per capita. So it's rare that we get these opportunities and I would love to bring some pro players to this area and let the people say them up close. - Yeah, so if any pros are listening, hit up Cosmic Dave if you wanna make a little extra bucks as you're traveling down from Maple Hill. Well, that's really all the questions I got for you, Dave. Is there any shout outs you wanna give or anything? - My shout outs, Steve Dodge, my man, Ben Kenny, my man. Dave Chandler, Guardian Alien, Sea Box Ox, all these people, mitten bags, these people that we, everybody, we're all in this together and I feel like a lot of disc golf companies are out there doing their thing out of passion and not necessarily everyone's making lots of money, but it's not about that. We are all together collectively elevating the community and I'm super happy to be a part of it. We are also just started a partnership with Disc Golf Pro Tour where you'll see our banners out on the remaining events for the rest of this year. That just happened yesterday, except yeah. Really excited about that. I love having Cosmic out there for the players and the fans to see and we just wanna be more a part of it and looking forward to making a big difference. I'm gonna be dedicating a significant portion of my time to expanding Cosmic and making it my primary job and career. So looking forward to it. - And are we gonna expect to see more merch, causing merch? - Oh yes, oh my goodness, yes. Our goal now that we've established ourselves is to good vibes, awesome brand that everybody loves. Yes, we're trying to bring more merch, more apparel to the people. So people can wrap us out there and enjoy the branding and inspire more good vibrations all around. - Yes, awesome. - Thanks so much, Dave, have a Cosmic day. This is a very cool day. - You have a Cosmic day. - All right, thank you. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment, and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) (gentle music)
