Hello,

My name is Shane Seal. I am from the state of MS where I have created a scholarship for a student at Pearl River Community College. I would like to start a nation wide scholarship tournament series to fund a national scholarship that students can apply for and use to attend the university of their choice. Below is the outline that I would propose we use as a start to create this scholarship.

We would host 8 tournaments a year with the sole purpose of funding the scholarship. Sponsors can be found to purchase the discs for the tournaments to use as prizes. In return for a sponsor donation of $100, each sponsors name would be placed on the disc design for that tournament. All of the prizes could be paid for through the sponsors. This frees up the entry fees to go straight to the scholarship and gives the sponsors a ton of advertisement (Name on 100-150 discs that will be thrown over the next couple of years). This also allows entry fees to be kept very low. We only charged $25 per player this year. We raised enough money this past year to help send a disc golfer to college at PRCC. With 100 players I think that it is reasonable to assume that each tournament could raise $2500. If we host 8 of these, that would be a total of $20000 a year in scholarship money.

A panel could be chosen to help decide which applicants receive a portion of the scholarship proceeds. I have laid a lot of ground work to get this started with Discraft, and I will be talking to Harold over at Innova this week.

If you are interested in helping the future of Disc Golf and America in general, post here and let's get this started nation wide. You can shoot me an email at [email protected] for more information about how to get involved. I would like to kick this off for the 2008 season, but I cannot do this without your help.

BTW our second scholarship tournament this October. Any help is always appreciated.

Count me in as a sponsor for this fall's tourney, Shane. I think that one of the avenues we need to go down with disc golf is the college connection.

You're thinking big there, but $20k a year is a lot of students in community colleges. And someone tells me you are the vision behind the handicapped disc golf course down there, so you can clearly make thing happen. Good work.

Thanks for your encouragement and donation Terry. I was thinking more like awarding 16 students - $1000 scholarships this year, and saving $4,000 each year to start an endowment that could build toward awarding scholarships off of just the interest gained each year.

The ADA course has been a success so far, you can read some information about it at...
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070812/NEWS01/708120329/1002

I wish everyone could see the smiles on the faces of the disabled who are playing the course. It is awesome! The bells on the baskets to help the blind locate them is working well. We even have some prototype discs with buzzers on the bottom. i can't take all of the credit by any means though. A good friend of mine Shea Hammond got me involved and really pushed the project along every step of the way. It is a great feeling when you help someone else.

Shane

Add me in for a $100 sponsorship, Shane. Also (depending on the boss), I would love to volunteer to help you run the fall tournament. Is the Oct. 13 date firm?

OK, two of my favorite characters on this board (Terry C & Chris L)
have stepped up to support Shane on his tourney.
What are the rest of you waiting for?
Are you saving your $25.00 for the next "worlds fastest" disc?
Get a clue and invest in this fine endeavor to support the
education of a young disc golfer.

I am proud to be one of the founding sponsors
and it is quite gratifying to see the results of Shane's efforts.
The recipient of the first scholarship is a quality young man.
Others that can benefit from this program are across the country.

Get involved with making a difference.

steve timm

The October 13 date is indeed confirmed. Thank you for your kind words Steve and also your $100 donation. It looks like we may have free food again for this tournament. More information to come soon. Hoping to get some more commitments in hand so that I can go ahead and order the first discs.

I would really like to see some tournament directors step up and commit to running a tournament next year. We only need 8 tournaments in a calendar year, I know that we can do it. Please send me an email at [email protected] if you have any questions.
My mailing address is ...

Shane Seal
260 Magnolia Drive
Picayune, MS 39466

Please make all checks payable to Wildcattrace Disc Golf Tournament

Donations in hand so far...
Steve Timm
Shane Seal
Judges

Pledged but not received...
Chis
Terry
John F
Don P

Transparency of information breeds self correcting behavior!

Thanks Terry for your donation to the scholarship. I received it today, and will be depositing it on Tuesday at PRCC.

Thanks again,

Shane Seal

i was thinking about scholarships for kids myself when I was @ the USDGC and they were talking about EDGE...

I was wondering if anyone thinks this would be a good idea and obviously someone else does... good stuff! and maybe you can get some of that EDGE $ to contribute? or maybe they could start their own?

Thanks to everyone who helped make the tournament a success. We had over 200% payout as well as raising over $1100 for the scholarship fund. Small steps to begin with, but I am hoping for bigger things next year. Look for more information coming soon.

Shane