2015 Thrower’s Choice Award Winners: Justice, McBeth, Pierce

With thousands of votes coming in from around the world, the 2015 All Things Disc Golf Thrower’s Choice Awards caps another exciting disc golf season. As we’ve said in previous years, the Thrower’s Choice Awards wouldn’t be what it is today without you, the reader.

The polls have been counted and the results are in. The winners of the 2015 Thrower’s Choice Awards are…

2015 Disc of the Year: Dynamic Discs Justice

Dynamic Discs Justice - Thrower's Chocie Awards Disc of the Year

The Dynamic Discs Justice has been named the 2015 Disc of the Year with 42.1% of the vote! The vote was close early on, but the Justice took the win in the end. The Justice joins the Dynamic Discs Judge (2013) and Innova Thunderbird (2014) in the Disc of the Year category.

  1. Dynamic Discs Justice (42.1%)
  2. Discmania FD3 (18.47%)
  3. Dynamic Discs Evidence (7.84%)
  4. Reptilian Disc Golf Scale (7.77%)
  5. Latitude 64 Ballista (7.51%)
  6. Westside Discs Bard (7.34%)
  7. Wetside Discs Sampo (4.07%)
  8. Dynamic Discs Convict (3.78%)
  9. Reptilian Disc Golf Serpent (1.13%)

Male Pro of the Year: Paul McBeth

Paul McBeth - Thrower's Chocie Awards Male Pro of the Year

The 2015 season for Paul McBeth was quite the successful one and he ran away with the Male Pro of the Year voting to add one more award to his list. From the start of the year to this year’s final events, McBeth was consistently at the top of the leaderboard.

This is McBeth’s second straight year taking home this award. The top three vote getters are:

  1. Paul McBeth (46.76%)
  2. Ricky Wysocki (15.16%)
  3. Simon Lizotte (7.09%)

Female Pro of the Year: Paige Pierce

Paige Pierce - Thrower's Chocie Awards Female Pro of the Year

Female Pro of the Year voting was closer than the Male side of the award, but in the end it was Paige Pierce taking home the top spot. Pierce’s third World Championship highlighted her season and was quite the emotional moment with the win over Sarah Hokom after Hokom survived a horrific car accident. Pierce was one of the most consistent disc golfers this year, regardless of gender. There are no signs of Pierce slowing down any time soon.

The top three in the Female Pro of the Year voting are:

  1. Paige Pierce (34.58%)
  2. Sarah Hokom (21.42%)
  3. Paige Bjerkaas (11.83%)

Moment of the Year: Paul McBeth’s Gland Slam Season

Paul McBeth’s 2015 season was something disc golf has never seen and one could argue we’ll never see it again. Wins in every Major tournament, a fourth straight World Championship and his first United States Disc Golf Championship. Even outside of the Majors, McBeth dominated the season as he never finished outside the top 3 in a PDGA event. McBeth’s record setting season took home the most votes to be named the Moment of the Year in 2015.

The second highest vote getter was seeing the multiple ace videos hit ESPN’s SportCenter as part of their Top 10 highlights. From the Memorial to the Ledgestone Insurance Open and many in between, we saw aces from Nate Doss, Dave Feldberg, Paige Pierce, and others all make the popular sports show. Exposure like that is never a bad thing for disc golf and we can only expect more of it to happen in 2016.

The inaugural St. Jude Charity Invitational in California finished in third as the first year event helped raise $215,000 for the kids of St. Jude.

Finally, Sarah Hokom surviving the terrible car accident and battling back to finish in second place at this year’s World Championship finished with the fourth highest votes. First, we have to state that we made a little bogey here when we decided not to have this moment as an option in the initial polls.

We initially had it as part of the list, but after we showed a handful of disc golfers the list, it brought up more questions than we expected. Many who we showed the list to never heard of the story. They are more casual disc golfers and don’t follow the professional events as much as we do. They read it as she got into an accident and lost. They didn’t experience it in real time and didn’t have the context. Others asked for the context and we were afraid of it coming off strange to people who weren’t in the know. In the end, we added it back in and adjusted the vote totals to take into account the one day it missed. After everything was totaled, the results would have been the same.

This year’s top five moments:

  1. Paul McBeth’s Grand Slam season (34.12%)
  2. Aces hit ESPN’s SportsCenter (18.53%)
  3. Disc golfers raise $215,000 for St. Jude (11.44%)
  4. Sarah Hokom survives accident at Worlds, battles back to finish second (9.17%)
  5. Jeremy Koling wins the Memorial in playoff over McBeth (6.94%)

Thanks to all who voted in the 2015 Thrower’s Choice Awards! As always, we’ll review the format for 2016 and make any adjustments if needed. With new disc golf tours starting up in 2016 and the competition better than ever, we can’t wait to see what 2016 has in store!

The post 2015 Thrower’s Choice Award Winners: Justice, McBeth, Pierce appeared first on All Things Disc Golf.

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