(upbeat music) - Happy Saturday everyone, and welcome to a DGPT history here at Disc Golf Daily. First off, we want to apologize for being absent the past two weeks, you know, sometimes life happens. That being said, a guy who is always happening is here with us on the podcast this week. It's Miles Parkhill from Peregon Disc Golf. How's it going, Miles? - It is going great. - Awesome, well, thank you for taking the time. Like I do with every person on the podcast, especially people who've been around for a while, love to hear just a little bit about how you got into Disc Golf. - My dad lived in San Diego when I was probably in junior high, and we always played catch, Frisbee kind of stuff, and I saw the MTV Sports, which I know that clip has gone around with like, Bamba and those guys. And that was the first time that I saw it, and then when I went to California, I think I literally looked in the phone book or something. This is pre-internet. And the Morley Field was literally a bus right away from my dad's house. So we went together the first time. We played with Snapper Pearson, who showed me how to throw. No idea who he was that time. Come to find out later, you know? He was Disc Golf Hall of Fame, so that was cool. And then, you know, if my dad was working, I would go down to the course and play with my play, like just pick up with whoever is on the course or just play alone. And then when I came back to Illinois, there was courses, I just didn't know them, didn't know where they were at a park board meeting, trying to get a skate park, and somebody chimes up and says, "We should get a Disc Golf course." And then that is now one of my longtime friends, Brad Dow, and we got a Disc Golf course a lot quicker than we got a skate park. So then we were able to play Disc Golf in Springfield and do tournaments. And yeah, that's really kind of how it all started. But yeah, the summers in California and San Diego is where I started. - Awesome. So starting in California moved to Illinois, and then you're in Illinois. Have a bit of a skate background, as you sort of mentioned, but you also at some point get connected to Steve Dodge. So I'm curious, how did that sort of connection come about? - I think it really probably was through Dana. Dana was coming down and playing tournaments in Springfield, I was going up to Chicago land area and playing tournaments occasionally. So made friends with him. And I was trying to think about that before we started this call. I know I went to Maple Hill pre-pro tour just to like, I don't even know what I was going for. I wasn't playing, I think I was just going to maybe promote Paragon or something. I know I had tried to reach out to Steve at some point when he was doing the players cup, trying to like, hey, let me print shirts for you. And he had somebody at the time. And then I think once I met him there, that's also where I met Terry Miller for the first time. I had also been trying to get to do work with him. And he's like, ah, you're a nobody. So yeah, but yeah, so now it's all full circle. Yeah, so Dana Vichy, I assume what you're talking about, was at the time people may not remember this of vibram sponsored player and so, you know, most people now associate him with dysmania. But back in the day, Steve Dodge prior to starting the pro tour worked at vibram disc golf and had built himself a nice little group of sponsored players, including Dana. And so you're connected to Steve and I'm assuming, and hopefully you can give us some context here. At some point in 2015, maybe early 2016, you get a phone call out of the blue from Steve, that's normally how it goes. And he's got, you know, 10,000 ideas and seeing if you can at least do 9,000 of them. Yeah, well, we obviously did a lot of work with Steve when he was doing the vibram birdie bash. So he was always coming up with ideas and I was always, you know, just making things happen for him. And then, yeah, when the pro tour idea came up and they were just, "Oh, we're just going to do it ourselves, "not worry about PDGA." I was like, "Yes, Steve, let me help. "Let me do what I can to make it look as good as it can "on a shoestring budget." And yeah, the rest is history from there. - Yeah, and so when you say the rest is history, I think that most people, and I'm hopeful that I can have, have more of your time as the seasons go along because you sort of, you have definitely been involved from the beginning, but you're still involved today. Most people probably don't fully understand the breadth of services and/or a time that you've put into the pro tour. And so when you say help things look good on a shoestring budget, just walk us through some of the many different things that you sort of helped create there at the beginning. - Well, at the beginning, I didn't really know what Steve's vision was, and the first event was at Maple Hill. So Bob, Graham, I think, had made a scoreboard. So then I got pulled into, I brought all my vinyl cutting equipment, so I was literally making names for leaderboards as the round was ending. And I would go back to Steve's basement, I had a little shop stuff, and I was cutting things and making things, but you know, he had the festival games, which was getting built, and there was so a lot of things, and you know, he was trying to figure out how does this make money? You know, how does this, how is this sustainable? So yeah, then kind of next year, it's like, okay, let's do advertisements, what are the easiest things? So that's when we kind of created a little obi walls or the half walls, you know, that sound on the ground, and then obviously feather flags, the elevated baskets. I think the first ones were just like a metal, just like a tube, and then there's obviously been a few different iterations of that. And then at one point, the PDJ had reached out to do the pole cuisies, which then was adopted by the Pro Tour, so we kind of made that happen. Gosh, I don't know, I mean, then with the festival games, you know, we had a swinging basket, which I think now Nate Heil has, we had a pyramid of like the smaller dynamic baskets, I can't think what those are called right now. And then like the MVP, we had like five basket stacked up, the totem pole, you know, we made all these crazy festival games, a year or two, to really just let people have something to do in between rounds and try to get people out to have fun. Those were so much fun, it was so much work, but it was worth it. - Yeah, I think so, you know, primarily the podcast so far has focused really on sort of a preview of getting ready and started for the season. And so I look forward to having you on in future seasons to actually talk about the mechanics of building all of those things, because I do think that it is something that came and went, but was really cool when it happened, but also a day and a half of work every week when we had to set it up. So a lot of work, if you didn't have enough hands to do it. - Oh, so outside of that, and I think something that we maybe glossed over, right? Paragon Disc Golf is also primarily an apparel company. And so I guess when things started were in 2016, was that something, when Steve came to you, was that something that he was asking you to do at that time of, hey, like we need to make sure that the Pro Tour has merchandise to sell. - Yeah, I think that was probably an afterthought for him. He was really trying to figure everything else out. But then we obviously needed merch to sell. I can't really remember what we printed the first year. I know my wife still has some of the 17, 18 shirts, like when we used to actually type out the year on the shirts. So I can picture those, but I can't really remember the first year of what we really had. I don't know, I'll have to go back and think about that. - Yeah, yeah, and that's a good point. I think that I have a lot of the dude apparel, which I think came out probably in 2017, but some of it may be existed in '16. And then I have some baseball jersey type cut shirts. - Oh, yeah, they had one. - Yep, yeah, like those. - Yeah, so one of the things that you sort of alluded to a few different times now is sort of like things that were an afterthought. And so, I mean, it's never maybe fun to brag on yourself, but one of the things that I remember so fondly back at the beginning and not sure sort of where those timelines merged, right? Whether it was before things started in 2016, or if it was in 2017, 2018, you really were. You were like coming with ideas, right? It wasn't just a one-way street of like Steve ordering things. So maybe share some of the ideas of things that you did sort of come up with beyond even the course assets of different merchandising and whatnot, or maybe ways that you made it better if it wasn't your idea explicitly. - Yeah, well, I think that first year, if you think about like kind of the carnival games, Steve had made like a Plinko game, which was super cool, but it would always break 'cause it was a big acrylic piece and then the trailer would get destroyed. There was another one we were like knocking blocks over, which eventually that turned into Silly Pines, like throwing at Silly Pines. Obviously the radar gun's always fun. The Distacto was probably the best game. And I believe that was, I think that was year one that he had that made. And people would just play that for hours and just, it was so much fun. But yeah, then we just kind of figured out, okay, how can we make these games a little easier to set up or make them more fun or make them more challenging? But of course, you know, Steve had a trailer and RV and the players that I sponsored at the time, Zoe and Dustin Keegan and Shasta and Paul Omen, they all were like the crew. And I don't know if Dana, I don't think Dana was in there, but yeah, I was like, hey, guys, you can make some money 'cause obviously back then, nobody was making money touring. So it was a way for them to make some money and still play, which was a challenge, I think, for them to do both 'cause it was a lot of work driving the RV and getting the courses set up and whatnot. - So one of the things that I remember, and I know that you at least made it look better. I don't know if it was your idea or not was the trust? No, the trust, you know, the trust comes a little bit later 'cause the first trust will rest in peace. But, or peace says, but the box wall. - Oh, the mystery box wall. - Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That was a lot of fun. I don't even know how that started. Well, actually, no, I do know how that started. So, Bowling Green, one year, and this was pre-pro-tour. This was, he was still a five-room. And we had Box4DIS, which has like a, it's actually a company that I own now, but it used to be owned by Jim Trotter, and he made a T-box, which was a half of a Trotter box for PlayerPax. So our idea was to have a stack of like 100 of them with prizes in it, people would buy it, and they could only pick off the top. We put decals on it to make it look cool. But yeah, those were really cool. I know we did some with like, Camp Todd's artwork on 'em and just different graphics. And that's when we really were getting a lot of product from companies. And that's how Steve was making money. It was by, you know, getting the product, selling it. So that was a good way to sell a lot of product in a short amount of time quickly, and not give people too many options of what they wanted to buy. But, you know, giving away tons of Zuko cards, and baskets, and backpacks, and shoes. I mean, the prizes were stacked back then, you know? - Yeah, yeah, the one thing that I remember, you know, sort of early on was not just the prizes, but sort of the aesthetic that went with it. I think that in some ways, when the box walls were being made, and this might have, like I said, I don't know, it seems like it was always a thing. And 2016, right? It made it, it was easier, 'cause there were only a few events. And then in 2017, I feel like I remember us doing it at every event, and maybe some of them not being as successful as others, but we did something really cool where we actually would print a graphic, and so it helped draw people in. And I feel like in many ways that might have been ahead of its time, outside of the fact that it did help move a lot of product very quickly. - Yeah, but from a professionalization standpoint, it was an opportunity to really get people all in one place. So you did mention it, so I guess we'll sort of hop to it, you know, and I guess to, I wanna pull this into two areas. One, you were at the first event on tour, 2016, Vibram Open, right? - Yep. - Yeah, and so you're there, and you get to see this really, what Steve thinks is this really cool thing, and that is what is affectionately known as the Zuka Trust, because it's actually been the Zuka Trust since day one, but it's not what we know today as the Zuka Trust. - Yeah. - And so tell us a little bit, maybe, at the risk of us previewing into the 2016 season, a little bit of that experience and how the trust as it exists today came about. - Well, I think the thing when Steve started, he literally would just get on Amazon and find anything, whether it was lights to do a glow tournament, or whether it was, gosh, I mean, the trust, like he just found that online somewhere, and it was more of like an indoor trust for like a trade show. I remember he was so excited, we printed banners for it, set it up on hole one, I have a great picture of it, and he didn't strap it down at all, and the first gust of wind blew it over, broke the thing into pieces, and the rest of the year it was just a struggle. Then, trying to figure out, okay, we can't afford real trusting, and then we bought scaffolding. And that was a little bit better, but I was like, Steve, if this doesn't work, at least you can still have scaffolding that you can sell. So you're not totally out the money. I just kept seeing all these things where we were buying, and we were either destroying them, or they were so customized, there was no way to repurpose them for something else. So I was always looking for ways to, okay, if we end up not liking this, we can sell it, and still get a little bit of money back, and it's not a total loss. But then there was an auction for a company that made floats for Disney, actually, and that's where all that aluminum speed rail came from, and yeah, we made several trusses for it. I think Nate's got one, the Pro Tour's got two, and that definitely makes it look bigger and better, and it was on a budget that was cohesive to what the Pro Tour could afford at the time. - Well, and not just on a budget that they could afford, but it was made out of material that has lasted this entire time. I think that the scaffolding, I got introduced to scaffolding truss at Ledgestone. It was the first thing that I did work for the Pro Tour, but then in 2018, when we debuted the new truss, I don't think any of us really imagined that in 2024, it'd still just be rocking. - Yeah, yeah. - A few new set screws and we haven't killed the thing yet. So yeah, so when I guess the only other thing that I really wanna sort of hone in on here since this is primarily about like previewing the getting ready for the tour, what was it in 2016 when the tours ago, what was it really that drove you to sort of being there at the beginning, being there for the first one outside of probably just delivering stuff that you made before? - I mean, obviously Maple Hill, I had been there before, and it's just such a special place. I think back then, I would always compare it to like summer camp, where you go and see your friends, maybe that you haven't seen all year because they live in different parts of the country, and you get to see 'em and hang out, and it's just such a good vibe, and I mean, there's nothing else like it that I've seen. I know there's, I'm sure there's other tournaments out there that are amazing as well, but yeah, I just wanted to be there at the time, I knew it was gonna be something special, and it was just exciting to be a part of this new next step of Disc Golf. - Yeah, that's probably, summer camp's probably really apt way to put it, I was thinking it's, maybe it was like one of the only places where I'm willing to show up, knowing that I'm sleeping at Steve's house, but not knowing how many other people I'm sharing a bedroom with. - Yeah. - You know? So I guess outside of everything that we've talked about already, was there anything else in the lead-up to the 2016 season that maybe we haven't talked about that sort of stands out from your side of things? - You know, just seeing how the video coverage of it was back then, you know, obviously I had been going to Arizona with Terry for a couple of years and just kind of helping him, you know, whether it was carrying snacks or whatever, you know, to do what they were doing. So that was cool to see, but then to see it go in a whole other direction where this is a legitimate business, not just, you know, him and Johnny trying to, you know, have a hobby that other people can enjoy, it was really cool to see that and doing the interviews and, you know, being up in the SAP house and just seeing all those things come together and put the story out to people that haven't been to those events yet. You know, 'cause I think that's what's really drawn more and more people to always continue to come. They see this coverage and they're like, "I gotta be there, I need to experience this." - Yeah, it is, I ask someone who's been to pretty much every pro-tour stop in one place or another, you know, people ask me where they should go if they've never been to one and I definitely do tell them I may be slightly biased, but Maple Hill is definitely a place to go see. - Yeah. - And I think that one of the other things, when the pro-tour was first started, you know, Steve started with the idea and he says it in one of the first ads, it's the best players at the best courses. And so there's some courses that have been on the tour in the past that maybe aren't on tour anymore, they were definitely either the best courses at the time or the best courses and there's not cell-suck signal or infrastructure to still be there, but Steve really did believe that if it, if he was showcasing the best courses with the best players more people would watch. And I think that that probably leads to why we have so many people complaining about boring courses on tour nowadays, you know, because at the end of the day, even if you have the best players, a boring course isn't fun to watch. - Yeah. - So the, I guess the one thing that I, that I maybe didn't, that I've lost over a miss that I do want to just sort of reiterate or ask in a different way before we wrap is when Steve came to you, so you're talking with Steve, we were working with him on the birdie bash, you're doing other things. When Steve came to you with the idea of, hey, I'm going to start a professional tour. One, I'm curious like what your initial reaction was, but two, what was it that made you say, you know what, I want to be a part of this? - A couple different things. So I used to travel a lot in a band before I, you know, did other things in life. So traveling and touring was something that I really enjoyed and the logistics of it. Doing this was such a big deal and it's really, it was really scary. I don't think that I would ever have the guts to try to take on such a big project, but to be able to be in the background and at least try to help make it happen. And if it burned down to the ground, it wasn't, it wasn't my house, it was, you know, me just sitting there helping. But yeah, I think that was the thing. I was exciting because Steve always had such great ideas that most people were scared to try. And there's been a lot of things that we've tried that didn't work. But there's been a lot of things like that, that we tried that did work and we still utilize today and it's what has shaped the sport. And without him and without taking these risks, I'm not sure what the sport would look like right now. - Yeah, that's a great way to put it. It's hard for me to think, you know, where things would be. And it's even crazier for me to think of how Steve played a part in getting me involved into the level that I am today to, you know. And so it's a very fun thing to look back on. And so, you know, you said burn it down, it reminded me of Steve asked me to ask you about a story of something you had burning down. But I don't know if that was something that actually happened before, you know, I don't think it happened before. And so I think that we might just have to tease people that that's a story that's coming in a later season. But I think it's safe to say, not only have you been around from the beginning, but I shouldn't say for better or for worse 'cause that makes it sound sad. But it's something that you're still involved in today. And so you haven't given up on the tour yet. - No, no, and I, you know, there's definitely times when it's a struggle, but I think that's what makes it fun. It's something different and new every day. There's always challenges. We get to be creative. We get to challenge ourselves. You know, we get to push ourselves with time constraints or driving distances or whatever it is, UPS not showing up. Who knows? - Yeah, no, I mean, I had this year in experience where all of my discs for the Portland Open got stuck in customs. And so it's always an adventure. And it's always a logistical hurdle to sort through. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why you and I have connected so well is because those are the sort of puzzles that we like to sort through. But I think that this is probably a good place to sort of wrap it up for today. Miles, first, I want to thank you for everything that you do. I want to thank you for being here today. And also look forward to having you on future seasons as we get to sort of talk in more detail the building out of the different things. And at the risk of not ever having an ad in this podcast before, but giving a plug now, if you do need anything for your tournament, your club, or just really anything disc golf related, don't ever hesitate to reach out to Paragon Disc Golf because Miles is the guy who gets it done. - Thank you. - Awesome, yep, have a great weekend, everyone. Thanks for listening, we'll catch on the next one. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment, and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) (gentle music)
