Freestyle Committee

Daniel O’Neil (USA)

Chair

Board member: 2024-present Current term ends: 2025 Daniel O’Neill is a 32-year-old flying disc sports athlete hailing from Harlem, New York City. Originally from Connecticut, Daniel moved to NYC in 2009 for college and has been highly active in the New York and global frisbee scenes ever since. In the 14 years he has been playing freestyle, he had the great fortune to teach and grow the sport in many countries around the world. He partnered with the FPA and the Paul McBeth Foundation to offer Freestyle and Disc Golf clinics in Mexico, Bolivia, and Nigeria. Directly representing WFDF, he has been an ambassador of flying disc sports and taught at multi-sport events including TAFISA European Sport for all Games 2023 in Perugia Italy, at the African Beach Games in Cape Verde, and at the World Urban Games in Budapest Hungary. He served a 3-year term as marketing director for the FPA and was tournament director and hosted the 2016 FPA World Championships. Daniel is 3x Freestyle World Champion and World Urban Games gold medalist. Post-college, Daniel has pursued both theater and dance professionally alongside his many athletic accolades in frisbee sports. Additionally, over the past seven years, Daniel has become a subject matter expert in recruitment marketing and talent acquisition strategy. Daniel currently is Vice President, Talent Strategy at NAS, a 75-year-old recruitment marketing firm. Daniel received his B.A. in 2013 from Columbia University, where he triple majored in Theater, Dance, and Economics-Philosophy.

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Ayal Benin (ISR)

Committee member: 2020-present Current term ends: 2022 Ayal started playing Freestyle in 2003 in Israel. He is an original member of IFDA - The Israeli Flying Disc Association (formerly known as FLOW). In 2004 he won the first ever Israeli Freestyle Championship. Between 2008-2012 and 2013-2017 correspondingly, he lived in both Spain and France and studied professional Circus Arts. Mainly using flying discs as props, he performed in 10 different countries across 4 continents, introducing Freestyle Disc to thousands of people. In 2017 he co-founded the Spanish "Freestyle Disc Canarias" association and organized "Jam Canaria", the first Freestyle event in Spain. In 2018, he returned to Israel and has since acted as Israel’s primary ambassador for promoting Freestyle. He’s organized many tournaments, such as a regular HAT league, the National Championship and "HolyJam", the first international event in Israel (March 2019). He won the 2018 Israeli Championship and the bronze at the 2018 European Championships. He is the first Israeli player to enter the FPA’s Top 20 ranked players. In June 2019, he was among a small group of international players selected by WFDF to represent and reach Freestyle at the first ever African Beach Games in Sal, Cape Verde. He is the Tournament Director of the upcoming 2020 FPA World Championships at Tel Aviv (postponed to 2021). Besides playing and teaching the sport, he manages two popular YouTube channels dedicated to Freestyle.

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Benedicte Audet (CAN)

Committee member: 2020-present Current term ends: 2022 I was introduced to Freestyle Flying Disc through the New York Jammers as I was living in Manhattan as an AuPair in 2015. Since then, I have migrated to Berlin, Germany and am now part of the Berlin Jammers freestyle crew. Through Freestyle I have had the opportunity to travel to numerous countries and participate in several competitions, including the world championships. In 2019 I placed second in the Women's Pairs division of the Frisbeer cup and first in the Women's Pairs division and second in the Mixed Pairs division of the Italian Freestyle Championships. I belonged to the "Spread the Jam Africa" team and had the opportunity through WFDF to travel to Cap Verde, Africa and organize several outreach workshops and demonstrations to introduce the Freestyle Flying Disc to the public and especially the youth on the island. The high point of my freestyle career however, is as I participated in the Olympic committee sponsored World Urban Games in September 2019 and represented my home country of Canada. Since then, I have started my Bachelor's degree and focused on participating in and helping to organize local tournaments in Berlin as well as "spreading the jam" to any curious, new and interested potential Freestylers. In 2022 the Freestyle Players Association World Championships are set to be hosted in Berlin, for which I will be one of the two tournament directors.

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Bill Wright (USA)

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Edo Turri (ITA)

Committee member: 2020-present Current term ends: 2022 I started playing Freestyle in 2013, thanks to Andrea Festi, my team mate. The first period was really just exploring the sport, without really thinking about where I was going. Then in 2017 an explosion: first time at Frisbeer Cup (biggest indoor European tournament in Prague) and first time competing in a FPA World Championship in Udine, making it to the finals. Amazing experience that introduced me to as many other great players, got me fired up and pushed me to do much more for the sport. I wanted to let everyone know about the sport, so with my team I started to ‘spread the jam’ in primary and secondary schools, sport events and other exhibitions, while training hard every day to get better. Became XDISC European ambassador under Frisbee Fever Rovereto. Notably, in 2019 I won Frisbeer Cup in mixed pairs, competed and won a bronze medal at the first ever World Urban Games in Budapest and at FPA Worlds 2019 in Seattle silver in mixed pairs and bronze in Coop category.

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Kevin 'Skippy' Givens USA)

Active promoting, administrating and managing Disc Sports programs and events since 1976. 14 Major Freestyle titles. Former Masters Division National Ultimate Champion (USA with US). Former Tournament Director for 8 major Freestyle and Overall tournaments. Administered and supervised over 100 Ultimate tournaments. Former Head Coach University of California, Santa Cruz Disc Golf Team. Retired Competitive Sports Supervisor University of California, Santa Cruz (28 years). WFDF Executive Director 2008-2011. Former WFDF Freestyle Committee Chair 2014-2020

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Wowa Wagner (GER)

Committee member: 2020-present Current term ends: 2022 Started to play Freestyle Flying Disc in 2008. Generally interested in disc sports. Used to play disc sports like Ultimate, DDC, Disc Golf, MTA etc. German Champion 2018 in Freestyle Frisbee. I love to make discs fly!

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Jakub Koštel (CZE)

Jakub started playing flying disc freestyle in 2006 with a group of his friends and soon after that became one of the core members of the newly formed Czech freestyle disc federation. As a player Jakub is a multiple national champion, three-times European champion and a vice-world champion. More importantly, Jakub is heavily involved in the organizational part of the sport. He is a board member of the Czech flying disc association and part of the board of directors of the FPA (Freestyle players association). Running events isn't strange to Jakub either. He is the TD of Frisbeer Cup - the largest indoor freestyle tournament and he organized both European and World championships. Apart from freestyle, Jakub is also running disc golf tournaments in Czech Republic. As his job, Jakub runs a frisbee e-shop and store in Prague. To prove that his life is really all about the flying piece of plastic, Jakub's life partner is Bianca Strunz - freestyle world champion from Germany. Together they have a beautiful son Kilian.

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