Sitting in a hotel room in Emporia, Kansas, Holyn Handley BS’17 found herself in the unfamiliar position of preparing for a news conference. The gathering, featuring select competitors on the Disc Golf Pro Tour in town for a tournament, was a first for the rising star.
“It’s the first time they invited me, and they usually only invite a handful of players,” said Handley, who lives in Austin, Texas.
She traveled in April to compete in the Dynamic Discs Open, a Professional Disc Golf Association event, which attracted 166 players from around the world. The tournament sponsor was a disc manufacturer whose professional traveling team Handley joined in her second year as a pro.
With a contract in hand, Handley put her engineering career on hold to pursue a rare chance to compete as a professional athlete.
“If I hate it, I’ll go back and find an engineering job,” she said. “But I just couldn’t pass it up.”
Handley is accustomed to the athletics spotlight. A standout volleyball player from Grapevine, Texas, she played for The University of Texas at Dallas for four years. Her team won back-to-back American Southwest Conference championships in 2015 and 2016, setting a school record for wins during the latter season. Along the way, Handley was recognized individually with several conference honors.
Handley was also a standout engineering student in 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 sensory rehabilitation device for the University’s Texas Biomedical Device Center.
“I was waking up really early for hard practices, balancing that with school and figuring out how to work hard and work efficiently,” Handley said. “And you still had to get enough sleep.”
After graduating with a biomedical engineering degree, 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 company Applied Medical.
Handley had never played disc golf before she and Morgan moved to California. What began as casual throws around local parks and area courses became more serious as Handley’s skills steadily improved.
“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 Disc Golf Association and began entering tournaments, where I was beating local pros.”
“Professional disc golf is still very niche, but I’m starting to build a name for myself, and people are recognizing me. This has given me the opportunity to be an athlete again.”
Holyn Handley BS’17
Disc golf is like traditional golf in that players walk nine- or 18-“hole” courses and aim to finish with the lowest score. In this case, though, competitors throw polypropylene discs and count throws instead of strokes. The “hole” is a short pole topped with a metal basket into which players toss or “putt” the disc. Top players often carry more than 20 discs in their bags, each designed for a specific task, similar to golf clubs.
“Shot-shaping is a really difficult skill that 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 disc. Reading extreme wind is another skill in itself. If you get the wind wrong, you’re really wrong.”
The more Handley played, the more she appeared on the podium, winning regional 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. It was a big deal that I showed up and beat a couple of the best women in the sport.”
That performance attracted 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 on tour, but I won some larger events, and Dynamic Discs made me an offer that I could make work financially, even giving up my job,” she said.
Handley finish 19th in Kansas at the Dynamic Discs Open, where windy conditions played havoc with competitors. But the season is young; players like Handley have more than 20 tournaments around the country from which to choose. 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.”