Juha JALOVAARA

Board position: President

Email address: juha dot jalovaara at qdc dot fi

I started playing ultimate in the early 80´s in my hometown of Espoo, Finland. Between 1982 and 1998, I played for Finland in all of the European and World Championship tournaments held in that period. I also participated as a club player in all of the WUCC tournaments between 1989 and 1997. I have participated in disc golf and field events on the Finnish championship level as well, although never as a serious contestant. Already back in 1985 I found myself involved in an early EFDF meeting in Obertraun, Austria and from 1988 onwards I served as the Finnish member of the WFDF Ultimate Committee and finally as chair of that committee and WFDF Board member in 1992-94. During that time I assisted the tournament directors of respective championships in Toronto, Utsunomiya, Madison and Colchester on behalf of WFDF. Some other things I was actively involved in were work with the WFDF and UPA rules of ultimate and conceptualizing the WFDF and UPA approved disc programs for ultimate. Together with WFDF President Nob Rauch we completed a revision of WFDF Bylaws and an organizational restructuring in 1992.

In 1994, while living in Germany, I helped my club team Mir San Mir organize a successful EUCC event and, ten years later in 2004, I chaired the organizing committee of the largest WUGC tournament to date. I have served as president of the Finnish Flying Disc Association during 2004-08 and I also returned to the WFDF Board in 2001, first as member at large and later as interim treasurer. As WFDF treasurer I formulated a financial plan and membership dues restructuring program, which helped WFDF to stabilize its financial position and provided for continuity.

My mission as WFDF President is to greatly accelerate the growth of flying disc sports across the globe without compromising the values of fair play, mutual respect and friendship of players for one another. Some of the ideas I believe in are:

• WFDF events becoming showcase events of sports par none
• leveraging these events as marketing tools for the good of our entire sport
• using WFDF resources to produce promotional material, which only a few individual member associations would be able to produce on their own
• a professional management process, proper documentation and effective reuse of all the skills and know-how we have accumulated through the years
• that sports organizations are founded on volunteer work, but sometimes, for the sake of synergy, it makes sense to pay a disc player to do a job that might otherwise be outsourced
• that the World Games are a great marketing opportunity for us, but we shouldn't waste too much time talking Olympics at the moment
• that disc sports should remain self-officiated, and the role of timekeepers, scorekeepers, line-observers etc. should be to assist players in making better calls by providing them with information, not judgements

At home my wife Silja and I run a junior disc program for our three sons who are 9, 7, and 1 years old. I have a masters degree in industrial management and production economics. Ten years ago I co-founded a management consultancy, QDC Business Engineering, which specializes in supply chain engineering of large and medium-sized industrial enterprises. My work has given me an inside view of the operational challenges faced by some of the leading names in the European industrial landscape.