moises alfaro

Moises Alfaro at the Roger W. Lytle Disc Golf Course in Founders Park.Photo by Danny Fulgencio

Moises Alfaro played baseball, basketball and soccer and grew up in Oak Bluffs. He always carries a Frisbee with him that he can throw around before and after practice.

That was in the early 70’s when flying saucers became insanely popular. In 1976, when he was 23, a friend told him about a frisbee competition in Corpus Christi.

So they went on a road trip, thinking it would be fun to play on the beach. Alfaro competed and won, becoming the first Frisbee champion in Texas.

He won in his own right (his winning throw was 82 yards) in a game in which a player throws a Frisbee as far as possible and sprints to catch it. But he’d never seen freestyle, in which athletes perform Harlem Globetrotter-style tricks — behind your back, under your legs, while doing somersaults while spinning the disc.

jose alfaro

After that, he went home and practiced freestyle Frisbee for five or six hours a day.

Alfaro already had a wife and child by this time, but Frisbee maker Wham-O paid to play in the World Frisbee Championships in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, about a year after he won the Corpus.

He was ranked 19th out of about 100 athletes from around the world. He then returned to the World Championships four more times, earning sponsor fees through points tournaments across the country. He’s been called “The Lone Star of Texas” because he’s been our state’s only competitor. He has been featured in Frisbee World Magazine several times and organized the first Dallas area Frisbee Tournament at Lake Ray Hubbard in 1979.

That same year, he won the second annual Waterloo Disc Golf Classic in Austin, now in its 39th year. His picture appeared on the first page of the Austin American-Statesman: shirtless, shorts, tan, straight black hair in a cape, football boots. That’s his professional Frisbee uniform.