We sat down with her to learn more about the sport and how “going pro” works:

Q: How do professional disc golf players make money playing the sport?

A: Well, it’s really blown up a lot in the last few years, especially since COVID. There are people getting paid serious money to play professionally — like millions of dollars like the top players so it’s actually a lot bigger than people realize. But yeah, you get paid cash, if you’re on a professional level, and then you have sponsorships and every sponsorship is different depends on your level. You could be getting paid a salary in addition to disc sales and then you have your own merchandise that you can sell. So, there are a lot of people actually making a living out of it.

Q: What motivates you to keep playing?

A: I’ve actually kind of stepped back because of a lot of physical injuries. So, I’ve had to step back from competing just recently, but it’s just fun to go out there. I’ve made a lot of friends, and it’s just a really unique experience. Then I also had people who would follow me — friends and family and then just strangers — that would follow what I was doing. And that was always in the back of my mind. I also had sponsors. So, you have a lot of people you’re trying to play for. That probably kept me going longer than maybe I would help otherwise.

Q: What kind of growth have you seen in disc golf community in Southeast Texas?

A: In this area, it’s been crazy, especially since COVID when people wanted something to do outdoors, and it’s cheap — anybody can go play. There’s no course fees at like 90% of courses, and you can just go play whenever you want. And then for $50, you can get all the discs you need to start with and then just spend your days playing disc golf.

We’ve been adding courses, and the cities are putting more money into the courses to fix them up to attract people to play. Now there’s a course in Lumberton, there’s a couple in like Orange and Vidor there. Scotty just fixed up Pleasure…