Two candidates were nominated for the position of Executive Director of the FPA Board od Directors – Paul Kenny and Tom Leitner. Eighty eight FPA members voted in the election. Paul received 64 votes, and Tom received 24. We are all grateful for their offers to take on the big task of leading the FPA Board through the next three years. The Executive Director is an important position, especially in this time of potential great growth for our sport.
Here is a thank you message from Paul Kenny:
Fellow FPA members and freestylers everywhere.
Thank you for the vote of confidence in selecting me as Executive Director for the next 3 years. I am humbled by your confidence in me. Clearly Tommy would have been a great choice as well and I hope he continues to do the great jam spreading he is famous for as the European pied piper – so I am doubly humbled!
As I stated in my nomination write-up, I will facilitate as best I can the new judging process that is currently ongoing (Ryan and committee and doing quite a bit of work already behind the scenes).
With the recent announcement regarding the World Urban Games (WUG) we have a great opportunity to expose our sport to a completely new and broader audience. It is envisioned combining the new judging system with its streamlined timing and sophisticated integration possibilities with events like WUG to provide a vehicle our sport can use to properly market ourselves to larger sponsors and event organizers. I hope all of us can go all in on this. This is our future if we want it.
The FPA is always open to new ways to grow our sport beyond the above. The Xdisc relationship is a new, great opportunity to get better youth engagement. If any of you have ideas to help grow the sport, like Tommy’s Westerfield Challenge, the FPA is here to help you facilitate that. It is hoped again with the new streamlined judging system, there should be more time at our larger events for some of these jam spreading events.
As a personal appeal, I would like to ask if folks that do shows would be interested in helping the FPA (and vice versa) spread the jam. The more folks we have in the sport, the more shows available. J I am thinking about The Rovereto team, Frisbee Rob, Brian and Jay at the Flying Aces, Gary at Spinningbees and Toddy at World Class Frisbee Shows. I know there are more (Karlsruhe for sure and even things like Daniel’s trip to Japan) and working together is best for all of us. If there are things the FPA can do for you let us know. For us, it is exposure and memberships we would like to see. Remember if a first timer or under 18, FPA membership is free and disc discounts are enormous!
It is always the right time to thank those folks who do so much for our sport and it is impossible to thank everyone or thank them enough! For sure Discraft, Discovering the World, the Wrightlife, Ultimo, Frisbeeguru and Xdisc are just a few. Buying their stuff (usually at nice discounts!) supports freestyle and is a win-win for all of us!
Lastly, we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the FPA Board and others who contribute in more behind the scenes ways. Mystiq! doing much of our graphic arts; Ryan hauling equipment to run judging and consuming so much time; Chris Bellaj helping Frisbeeguru with livestreaming; and all Tournament Directors, our primary unsung heros. Our sport’s Board does so much behind the scenes to improve our sport. Each and every one of them do this for the love of the sport, get paid nothing and put in a LOT of time. My personal thanks go out to Jakub Kostel, Bethany Sanchez, Jens Valesquez, Thomas Notzel, Randy Silvey, Lori Daniels and Michal Maciolek.
Yours,
Paul Kenny
