7on7 Robyn Turner

How many hats does Robyn Turner wear?

1. Producer at CNN, your round-the-clock news source.
2. Advocate of filling your life with good food, good people, good music, good times.
3. Radical awesome Ultimate player (see: UVA, Top Shelf, Mother Lovers, Rival, Southern Revival, etc).
4. AFDC Grants board member.
5. All-around good egg.
That’s a lot of hats.

What is your current role in the AFDC?
Chairman and founding member of AFDC Grants. We raise money to help support youth and college ultimate players and teams. And of course I can’t talk about AFDC Grants without giving props to Brad Schweers, George Li, and Michelle Van Handel, who are on the committee. Getting AFDC Grants off the ground definitely has been a collaborative effort.

Robyn Turner 1What are you looking to accomplish within the next year/season and how do you plan to go about it?
As always, we need to keep raising money. The more money we raise, the more players and teams we can help, and the more we can grow the sport in the Atlanta area. We gave out over $3300 in grants in 2013, and we hope to do a lot more this year. Keep in mind, we’ve only been around for a little over a year, so we’re constantly assessing which fund-raising strategies, application procedures, and grants bear the most fruit. I’d tell you our specific goals for the year, but we’re meeting later this week to discuss them. Stay tuned.

Why did you decide to get involved?
Boezi. A couple of years ago, he asked me and some other AFDC folks to select recipients for a small sum of money earmarked for skills and fitness camp fees. During that process, I started thinking, Wow, we could easily make more of this. I envisioned something like the Smile Train model, where a donation of $250 pays for a child’s cleft palate surgery. I felt like there must be a bunch of ultimate players like me, who would be willing to donate money to help kids in financial need play ultimate. So, Boezi said to make it happen. The great thing is the AFDC already had 501(c)3 non-profit status thanks to Romey, so we didn’t even have to deal with that.

What is your craziest AFDC story?
Well, it’s no roshambo to drink breast milk or anything, but I produced a CNN.com/World Sport piece profiling Mark Poole at Terminus last summer. Anyone who knows about Terminus knows severe weather is always a looming threat, so I was pretty angsty about the shoot for weeks beforehand. At one point that weekend, I was sitting in my car on the phone to London begging for another shooting day while a biblical freaking deluge flooded the fields. Fortunately, I got the green light, and then I just had to pray Sunday games would happen. Thank God we were able to finish the shoot. The piece ran a few times on CNN International, and Will Juras actually saw it at the airport in Seoul! It had about 100k hits on CNN.com the last time I checked. Please feel free to click and share: http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/sports/2013/08/21/human-to-hero-mark-poole-ultimate.cnn.html. It’s fast-paced and also serves as a good Ultimate 101 for people who don’t know much about our sport.

What type of shenanigans do you get into outside of ultimate?
I enjoy a good ski trip, I devour periodicals, I’m always looking for guests to book on CNN International, and I’m moving toward disc golf as an age-appropriate replacement for ultimate.

Robyn Turner2There’s a kitten stuck up in a tree.  Only you can help it and all you have is the contents in your frisbee bag. Assuming you can’t easily climb up the tree, what do you do?
I guess I could use the bag as a basket, tie it to an ace bandage and/or my shoe laces, throw it over the branch, wait for the kitten to get in it, and lower it down. Thank God you asked this. Now I’ll be prepared.

And finally, what do you love most about the AFDC?
It combines three things I love most — Atlanta, frisbee players, and ultimate.

 

Stay tuned to the AFDC blog and AFDC Facebook page as we continue with this series of 7on7!

Also be sure to check out our previous 7on7 interview of Sean Finlay here.

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