Alumna Scores on Pro Disc Golf Circuit

Sitting in a hotel room in Emporia, Kansas, Holyn Handley BS’17 is preparing for a press conference featuring a select group of professional disc golf players in town for a tournament. For Handley, a rising star on the Disc Golf Pro Tour, the press conference is a first in her fledgling pro career.

“It’s the first time they’ve invited me to the press conference, and they usually only invite a handful of players,” said Handley, who lives in Austin, Texas.

Handley is in Kansas to compete in the Dynamic Discs Open, a Professional Disc Golf Association event in April that attracted 166 players from around the world. In her second year as a pro, Handley is playing in a tournament underwritten by Dynamic Discs, a disc manufacturer that made her an offer to join its professional traveling team. With a contract in hand, Handley put her engineering career on hold to pursue a rare chance to compete in a sport as a professional athlete.

“Knowing that it was a unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I just decided to take a chance on professional disc golf,” Handley said. “If I hate it, I’ll go back and find an engineering job. But I just couldn’t pass it up.”

Handley is accustomed to being in the spotlight as an athlete. A standout volleyball player from Grapevine, Texas, she played for The University of Texas at Dallas for four years, helping her team win back-to-back conference championships in 2015 and 2016 and set a school record for most wins in a season with 32-3 record in 2016. Along the way, Handley was recognized individually with several conference honors.

In addition to her role as a leading Comets volleyball player, Handley was also a standout student who was awarded academic scholarships to study engineering at the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. She balanced the demands of volleyball with challenging classes, working as an undergraduate research assistant and joining a student team competing to design a hand sensory rehabilitation device for the University’s Texas Biomedical Device Center.

“I was waking up really early for hard practices and then balancing that with school and figuring out how to work hard and work efficiently because we only have so many hours in the day,” Handley said. “And you still had to get enough sleep.”

Her efforts resulted in a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from the Jonsson School in 2017. Following graduation, Handley, along with her boyfriend, Tyler Morgan BA’16, moved to California for an engineering internship followed by a job offer as a process engineer for medical device component manufacturer Applied Medical Resources.

Handley had never played disc golf before she and Morgan took up the sport in California. What began as throwing discs around local parks and playing on area disc golf courses became more serious as Handley’s skills steadily improved. Then she discovered local tournaments and began beating more experienced players.

“We just got hooked on seeing how discs fly, and we started playing every weekend and buying better equipment,” Handley said. “I joined the Professional Disk Golf Association and began entering tournaments where I was beating local pros.”

Disc golf is a lot like traditional golf where players walk nine- or 18-“hole” courses aiming to finish each round with the lowest score. In this case, though, golfers throw polypropylene plastic discs and count throws instead of strokes. The hole is actually a short pole topped with a metal basket that players toss or “putt” the disc into. Top professional players often walk courses carrying more than 20 discs in their bags, each designed with a specific task and described much like golf clubs – drivers for long distance throws, midrange discs for shorter shots and putters for finishing out a hole. Depending on the need, discs feature varying thicknesses and edge characteristics for controlling shots and cheating the wind.

“Shot shaping is a really difficult skill but is so important when you play at a high level,” Handley said. “That requires you to have really good control over the speed and angle at which you release a disk, and then reading extreme wind is another skill level in itself. If you get the wind wrong, you’re really wrong.”

The more Handley played, the more she appeared on the podium, including winning regional professional tournaments including one in which she beat the reigning world champion.

“It was maybe my second professional tournament ever and I ended up winning,” she said. “That got a lot of attention because it was a big deal that I showed up and beat a couple of the best women in the sport.”

That performance drew the attention of potential sponsors, including Dynamic Discs. The company offered Handley a deal that pays her a salary, covers expenses and provides royalties on sales of the company’s discs while Handley tours full time.

“At first I didn’t have any intention of going out on tour, but I won some of the larger events and Dynamic Discs made me an offer that I could make work financially, even giving up my job,” she said.

Back in April, Handley finished 19th in the Dynamic Discs Open. The windy conditions played havoc with competitors, but the season is young for players like Handley who have more than 20 tournaments around the country to choose from. For Handley, being a touring pro provides ample opportunity to grow a fan base that follows her on social media, tracks her results and even cheers for her at tournaments.

“Professional disc golf is still very niche, but I’m starting to build a name for myself and people are recognizing me,” she said. “This has given me the opportunity to be an athlete again.”

Follow Handley and her disc golf career on Instagram @holls_17.