Here from our T1D Ambassador for Golf & Tennis Classic, 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 (T1D), 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^th… hope to see you there as well!

For more information about the JDRF Golf & Tennis Classic click here.