"It all started when I was out looking for someone to play golf with," says Ann Arbor’s Gunars Nollendorfs, one of the founding members of the Ann Arbor Area Disc Golf Club and the MDGO. Once the a³ club was up and running, creation of the MDGO soon followed. "Our league started in 1989, and there was immediate interaction with clubs in Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids. As we traveled around to tournaments, there were lots of inconsistencies in payouts and formats."

It’s frustrating for any disc golfer to travel for hours to a tournament, only to find unexpected surprises. Representatives from the different clubs were chosen to work out those inconsistencies, and the MDGO was born.

Ann Arbor’s Steve Peck resumes the tale. "There were many divergent views we all had about how we should collectively proceed," he said. "But, hey, we were all pretty seriously motivated to straighten out the mess that we called local tourneys. Most everyone was very motivated to get some consensus on how to proceed while being very outspoken and opinionated at the same time. Gunars and I knew there were some pretty strong views on how things should go, so we spent more than a few hours drafting up our own vision of what the state org should look like. We showed up at that first meeting with hard copies for everyone -- as much for our own benefit as anyone else’s -- so that we could be sure that we covered a few key issues and didn't get railroaded into something we'd regret. Then we established the democratic voting mechanism at that first meeting, and stuck to it religiously."

Peck, winner of the 1999 Brent Hambrick Tournament Director of the Year Award, retains duties as the MDGO’s Keeper of the Paper Trail. "Creating organization through documentation is absolutely critical to the longevity of any club," he said. "Documentation both organizes the communication during the meetings and, more importantly, provide a kind of 'institutional memory' for what the group discussed and decided. This is perhaps the single most important activity in terms of adding months and years on to the life of a club."

Over the years the MDGO Series has grown from four events in 1991, to seven stops in 1999 and 2000. Seven clubs from the state’s lower peninsula currently participate with active reps and events, and other groups in the northern areas often use the MDGO as a touchstone as they build their own clubs and events.

While the MDGO currently enjoys a reputation as the strongest regional organization of its type, there have been and continue to be plenty of challenges. "There’s always been some verbal pushing and shoving," says Gunars Nollendorfs. "I estimate that we’ve lost up to 50 percent of our MDGO reps over the years. They come in, get involved and then leave because of a difference of opinion."

The confrontations haven’t always been strictly verbal. Just prior to the very first MDGO meeting, Grand Rapids rep Al Haaksma faced a prospective member who brandished a gun at him in the heat of a dispute over the future of Michigan disc golf.

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