We are excited to announce our Event Ambassadors for the 2018 Golf & Tennis Classic set to take place at Fiddler’s Elbow in Bedminster, NJ on Monday, June 11. Joshua Engler and Sam DiGaetano are both active golfers and are living with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Read more below about how golf has impacted their journeys living with type one!

Meet Joshua Engler:

My name is Joshua Engler and I am 17 years old. I am a senior at the Bergen County Academies and will be heading to Haverford College in the fall to study Chemistry. There are a few things that I am passionate about it in life, and two of the biggest are finding a cure for type 1 diabetes, and playing golf. I’ve had T1D for almost 10 years now and I’ve played golf for about as long. I’m captain of my high school golf team and hope to play club golf in college.

People might not think golf and diabetes have a lot in common … but they do. They are games of numbers, closely connected, demanding constant calculations & measurements. In T1D, my pump and I together rely on algorithms to calculate the insulin to keep my blood sugar around 80. In golf, I calculate my distance from the hole and determine which club to use. Both are games of exact measurements. T1D involves measuring the weight of the food I’m about to eat and running the numbers in my head to determine the specific units of insulin I need. Golf involves measuring how hard I need to hit a certain putt and determining the size of my backswing.

Thank you for considering to participate in this year’s JDRF Golf and Tennis Classic. Your generous support of JDRF’s mission to cure, treat and prevent type 1 diabetes is something I don’t take for granted. JDRF is the leading funder of type 1 diabetes research in the world. Thanks to JDRF and to golfers like you, I believe we will one day find a cure for the 1.25 million people living with this disease. I’ll be out on the course on June 11 … hope to see you there as well! To register for the Golf & Tennis Classic click here.

Meet Sam DiGaetano:

Type 1 diabetes and golf have been such an interesting tandem in my life thus far; after finding golf shortly after stopping my District Baseball career, I was instantly hooked. Being diagnosed with type one at age 12 actually helped me discover golf in an indirect fashion. Ironically enough, this acted as a blessing in disguise for my exposure to golf.

Shortly after being diagnosed, I took golf seriously and ended up playing in high school. While learning to manage type 1 diabetes as a teen/young adult, I was making my way in golf – winning three state championships in high school with my team. After high school was over, with T1D now incredibly well managed, I accepted an offer to play Division I Golf at Rider University.

I was part of a unique group of Division I Athletes whom had T1D. Throughout my life, I’ve leveraged T1D as a backbone and part of who I am. I’ve learned through both golf and T1D that you can’t use anyone – or anything – as an excuse. Though things may go wrong and you may have an off day, it takes personal credibility and attention to understand that you’re the one who controls your score (blood sugar) and that a team around you can’t “hit the drive” for you.

Thanks to golf and having T1D, I’ve become the successful, driven, and happy person I am today. Thanks to fitness, I’ve found a way to combine golf and strength and healthy blood sugars. Thanks to T1D and golf for teaching me to put in the work to better myself and stay on top of what matters most … I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me in my career personally, and in the lives of T1D advocates and anyone affected.

Looking forward to meeting you at the Golf & Tennis Classic! To register for the Golf & Tennis Classic click here.