The winner of the autographed disc is…

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For the past week, we’ve been running a contest in conjunction with Avery Jenkins.

His last story for Rattling Chains covered the story behind and creating his trick-shot video with ultimate star Brodie Smith.

The disc being given away.

The two, who are each leaders in their respective sports, came up with quite the video of incredible trick shots — inside and outside.

At the end of Jenkins’ story, a contest was held to give away an autographed disc — signed by Jenkins and Smith.

We tried to make it as easy as possible to enter — by commenting on the story, liking the post on the Rattling Chains Facebook page, liking the post on Avery’s Facebook page and re-tweeting.

In the end, we received nearly 170 entries!

The winner was picked via Random.org‘s list randomizer.

Now, let’s give that disc away!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

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For those who celebrate today, we at Rattling Chains wish you a fine Thanksgiving Day.

Enjoy the day and be thankful for what you have!

If you fill up too much on turkey, get out and throw a few discs to work it off!

We’ll be back tomorrow with more disc golf goodness!

If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else, feel free to e-mail me and the crew at: pj@rattlingchains.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Life as a women’s player can be tough

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By Jenny Cook — Rattling Chains staff

Some of us are more competitive by nature than others.

I, for one, was born with a competitive edge. Just ask my father about the countless board games we’d play when I was a kid, or the many nights of staying up late just to play “one more game.”

Playing different sports growing up — including my favorite, soccer — taught me about perseverance and the determination to win, learn, and be challenged.

Jenny Cook getting her tournament game face on.

Which brings me to disc golf. Although I wish I would have discovered this sport in my early twenties (better knees back then!), I am grateful to be playing it now. Shortly after my first few rounds of disc golf, I heard from a friend that there was a governing body for disc golf, local leagues and even official tournaments.

They had me at “leagues,” and I was on board right away.

I immediately began playing in a local doubles league, which was an excellent place to meet people and to learn more about the rules that would later prepare me for the tournaments I’d play in.

I remember my first attempt at a tournament.

Jenny Cook was late to her first tournament and ended up spectating — but it turns out being in the gallery helped more than playing.

Yes, attempt.

I woke up late that August morning and rushed down to the course. I was too late to sign up and play that day, but honestly, I was a little relieved. I’ll admit I was nervous for my first competition in a non-team sport. I said hello to some friends and, instead of going back home, I decided to stick around and follow the women’s intermediate card.

Walking around in a tournament setting really calmed my nerves — all of my expectations and preconceived notions were set straight, because this was reality. And I loved every moment of it.

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Photo Focus: Nov. 20

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(Photo focus will run every two weeks or so on Rattling Chains. The idea is to focus on disc golf photographs submitted by staff members and readers. To see the guidelines for submitting a photograph for this feature, click here.)

The before and after photos of hole No. 12 at Rockburn Branch. (photo by Mike Chvojka)

The Story: Taken on hole No. 12 at Rockburn Branch in Elkridge, Maryland.

On Saturday, Oct. 27, I found myself at a course the locals like to call “Rockburn.” I had never played Rockburn before that gorgeous fall day, but I had an upcoming doubles championship there and I wanted to get a feel for the course so I wouldn’t go into the tournament completely blind.

A lot of people consider hole No. 15 as the signature hole and I can’t say I blame them. But the uniqueness of that hole is hard to capture with a cell phone camera.

As I walked up to my approach shot and lined up for my putt, I thought to myself that this hole was pretty unique as well. In the background was this metal roofed building, which had really weathered wood. That helped illustrate its age.

I know this building is still being used and I wondered if it was once a barn for someone. Or, perhaps there was some historical significance tied to it?

The color photo helps illustrate exactly what I was seeing as I lined up for my putt. But, I felt the photo was a little too dark as I was standing in the shade when I took it. I also felt, because of the amount of shade and lack of vibrant color, that you focus more on the building and less on the basket. I knew this photo would be better if I changed it to black and white.

I edited the original photo by changing is on my phone to the “documentary” setting. I think it suits the photo better. Changing it from color to black and white brightens the photo, highlights its simplicity and makes it easier to focus on the real subject — the basket.

Techie info:

  • Camera: Motorola Droid Bionic
  • Exposure: 1/500
  • Aperture: F/2.4
  • Focal length: 4.6mm
  • ISO: 100

– Mike Chvojka

If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else, feel free to e-mail me and the crew at: pj@rattlingchains.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Poll 35: Visiting Rattling Chains

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By P.J. Harmer — Rattling Chains staff

This week’s poll will help us, somewhat, shape the direction we plan on going with Rattling Chains.

Though we have a great group of writers, the reality is none of us get paid to do the work on this site. Therefore, when real life gets in the way, sometimes the content takes a hit.

When that happens, sometimes the load comes down on one or more of us and it becomes a burden.

But that’s neither here nor there.

All of us who write for this site enjoy the aspects we bring to readers — a journalistic way to look at the sport we love. I still believe we offer content not available in most other places, such as our in-depth pieces. Our interviews are not in a Q&A format, rather crafted in the form of an article in the format many traditional publications would use.

To do so is a time-consuming situation. We research. We interview. We write. We edit. We format.

Over the past few months, I’ve watched our site statistics. I’ve seen the type of stories that seem to get the hits and I’ve seen the ones that don’t work as well. I know what days the bigger hits will come and I know where hits come from on certain days etc.

Still, as we shape the site and we push forward, we need to know how to shape the site. For the next two weeks — today and next Monday — I’ll be doing polls that are based on the site and the reading tendencies of our visitors. In the end, we hope to continually make the site better moving forward.

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Noodle-Armed Review: Innova Starlite Roadrunner

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(The Noodle-Armed Review is intended for those players, like myself, who aren’t power arms and don’t quite hit 300 feet. Sure, it would be nice if you could throw longer, but let’s just hope you have a solid mid-range game to make up for it.)

By Steve Hill — Rattling Chains staff

Arguably one of the most successful disc golf ventures of the last year is Innova’s Blizzard Champion plastic, in which air is injected into discs during the molding process to make them lighter. Used to bring down the weights of warp speed drivers like the Boss and Katana —  as well as a host of others — it was only a matter of time before Innova extended the Blizzard trend to Star, their top-of-the-line, opaque plastic.

But when Innova announced that its first foray into this field would be used on the Starlite Roadrunner, I was counted as one of the skeptics.

Already a massively understable disc, the Roadrunner is one of my favorites. You can go full bore on it for easy distance and big turnovers, or use it for precise hyzer-flip flights through wooded courses. It is a pretty underrated disc, in my opinion.

However, given its penchant to be a bit flippy in regular weights, the thought of it moving down into 140-gram territory seemed unnecessary. Innova’s previous lightweight discs were all in the stable-to-overstable category, and making them weigh less served to lower the cruising speed they needed to reach their optimal flight. But since the Roadrunner already did not require much power to fly correctly, making it in this new Starlite plastic seemed like a runaway train to roller city.

But when I went out to play with some friends one day, another guy had picked one up and let me give it a toss.

I immediately went from a skeptic to a devout convert.

The ease with which the disc flew, and the lack of effort needed to make it do so, was quite enticing. As a result, I picked up a couple of my own to see if they could make the bag and help me reach that ever-elusive noodle-arm barrier — a 300-foot drive.

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Product Review: inFlight Guide

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By P.J. Harmer and Jack Trageser — Rattling Chains staff

I never understood flight charts for discs. A lot of people have told me I should check the charts when getting discs and such. But I didn’t get ’em. I saw graphs with numbers and lines and wondered what it meant.

Too, there seemed to be many different charts. Ones by manufacturers and ones by independent people.

Who is right?

My thoughts on disc flight is simple — I throw the disc and the way it goes is its flight. Pretty simple, eh?

The inFlight Guide by inbounds Disc Golf.

That’s why I was intrigued when contacted by inbounds Disc Golf. The company has a paperback book out, as well as an online spot, where you can check the flight path of more than 300 discs.

For people who like having flight guides, this book is small and compact and can easily fit in most people’s bags. That gives you the chance to use the book out on the course.

There is also a website for the inFlight guide which is continually updated with more flight charts.

There’s a small part in the beginning of the book describing how to use the book. However, as Jack Trageser will talk about below as well, these charts assume several things — including the player being a right-handed back-handed player, having perfect playing conditions and throwing a maximum-weight disc, among others.

I’ve never played in perfect conditions and I usually don’t throw maximum-weight discs.

Though I understand the need to have certain specifications to use the book, it seems like it’s pretty direct in the things that are needed for the chart to be useful. I’m sure all charts are like that, but it still ostracizes some players in the disc golf community.

For people looking for flight patterns and such, the book is useful. It covers hundreds of discs and it allows people to look up discs and get an idea of what the disc is supposed to do.

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Trick-shot battle: The making of Avery Jenkins vs. Brodie Smith

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(Note: At the end of this post is a giveaway for an autographed disc. See the details on how you can win!)

By Avery Jenkins — For Rattling Chains

I hope many of you have already watched “The Gods of Disc — Epic Trick Shot Battle 3” on YouTube. It features ultimate superstar Brodie Smith and myself performing outrageous throws into basketball hoops and disc golf baskets. If you haven’t, you need to watch this video before reading how it all came about.

This started last fall after I read a Twitter post from a good friend of mine, Jarrod Job, comparing Brodie Smith and myself in regard to our relevance in our respective sports. I responded, showing my appreciation for Smith’s Frisbee skills, but I questioned what he had for throwing distance shots — in hopes of eliciting a response from Smith.

For those who don’t know Smith, he’s a world-class ultimate player from Gainsville, Florida. He played for the two-time National Champion Florida Gators and is well-known for his outrageously entertaining Frisbee trick-shot videos on YouTube.

I’ve watched many of his trick-shot videos and I was thoroughly impressed by his never-ending energy and his amazing Frisbee skills. He also does a great job making these videos entertaining by calling out shots before making them and making funny comments to add to the entertainment value.

I remember the first time I watched one of Smith’s videos last year where he attempted — and completed — about 25 different throws into a plastic trash can from various heights and distances. He took multiple lines and made it all look very easy!

Being we are both extremely active on social networks, we communicated for several months and talked about the possibility of doing a trick-shot video together as I’m pretty good with a Frisbee, considering I have been throwing one since I was a kid. I also played ultimate at the University of Oregon for two years. Being we are both at the pinnacle of our respective sports, we knew we needed to make this happen, but he was in Florida and I was training in Santa Cruz for the winter. That made it difficult to make the connection. We decided to wait for a more convenient time so we could possibly meet up during the summer tour.

A few weeks later, he sent me his most recent video — a speed-boat trick shot he performed in Sydney, Australia. Smith threw a distance forehand shot off a bridge as a speedboat raced down the river. On the boat was an ultimate player, who did a full-extension dive, making the catch before landing in the water. I saw it on the first day it was released and it had about 250 views, so I made sure to post it all over Facebook in the hopes of getting him more views.

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Discraft’s Ace Race delivers with a lot of fun

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By P.J. Harmer — Rattling Chains staff

With Discraft’s Ace Race in the books, let’s take a quick peek at this year’s tournaments.

I don’t know how many of you participated in one of these events this year. For me, it was the second straight year I played in the tournament and it was equally as fun.

This year’s Ace Race ran from August to October and had 347 events held throughout the world. A few weeks ago, Rattling Chains writer Steve Hill wrote about the event on a more broad level.

The Ace Race disc. (photo by P.J. Harmer)

For those who didn’t read that and don’t know about the Ace Race, it’s a small and fun tournament where players have more chances at aces. For your entry fee ($25), you get two discs and some other swag.The player pack this year was well worth the money as each person got the two discs, a mini, a pair of 80s-style sunglasses and a stainless steel water bottle.

The discs are the only ones you can use during the tournament.Each player throws them at each hole, counting nothing but aces and metals, which is how many times you hit metal somewhere on the basket, but without slamming an ace.

In the end, the person with the most aces wins an excellent prize package of Discraft discs.

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Poll 34: Favorite course

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(EDIT — Nov. 13 — Please read the poll question at the bottom. This is not asking you what your dream course if money were no object. It’s asking what your favorite course is of ones you’ve already played. Thanks).

This week’s poll is a bit different.

There are no choices with this one — it’s going to be based fully on your comments on this post.

Hopefully the answers for this poll will give other players places to research and check out. Maybe there’s a hidden gem. Or one that is already well-known.

Let me not get too far ahead of myself, however.

Before we get into this week’s poll, however, let’s go back and check out last week’s results.

We asked you if you could only play one brand for the rest of time, what would it be? The results didn’t shock me as I figured the big two would be at the top and they were.

With 179 people letting us know what they would do, Innova was the runaway winner with 79 votes — 44 percent. Discraft was second with 47 votes (26 percent). It dropped off even more after that as Latitude 64 (25 votes/14 percent), Discmania (10 votes/6 percent) and Vibram (7 votes/4 percent) followed.

Other (4 votes/2 percent), MVP (3 votes/2 percent), Millennium (2 votes/1 percent), Lightning (1 vote/1 percent), DGA (1 vote/1 percent) and Gateway (0 votes) filled out the rest of the choices.

Let’s check in to see what some others said:

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