Dilger wins Jim Butler Days tournament

TONOPAH — Tonopah hosted its Jim Butler Days festival over the Memorial Day weekend where the Nevada State Horseshoe Pitchers Association held a sanctioned tournament at the Joe Friel Sports Complex.

Twenty-two pitchers from around Nevada traveled to Tonopah to participate in the singles tournament.

The pitchers were split into four classes – A class, B class, C class and D class.

In the A class, Kasey Dilger was able to sneak out a win thanks to an opening game tie to begin the tournament.

Dilger finished the day going 3.5-1.5 in his five matches.

His lone tie of the tournament, which happened to be the winning half a point, came against Tom Grose.

Both pitchers ended their match with 47 points.

Dilger finished with a tournament-high 284 points and threw 81 ringers in his 200 attempts.

Lawrence and Larry Workman both finished their tournament tied for second place with identical 3-2 records.

Lawrence won the tiebreaker thanks to outscoring Larry 275-248.

Fourth-place finisher, Grose, ended his day with a tournament-high 107 ringers in his 200 throws, good for a 53.5 ringer percentage.

The B and C classes each had pitchers finish the tournament undefeated to take the wins.

Mike Dedeic ended his day 5-0 to win the B class. Three of his five wins came by three points or less, including two games he won by just one point.

He scored 127 points and threw 42 ringers on the day.

Dedeic was followed by Matt Jose and David Johnson, who finished in second and third places respectively.

They each finished the tournament with 3-2 records. Jose won the ringer percentage tiebreaker, beating Johnson 27% to 22.5%.

Don Brown finished the C class with a 4-0 record.

He defeated his opponents by an average of 31.5 points per game.

Brown had class highs in both points (181) and ringers (61).

Dennis Houston (3-1) and Danielle Workman (2-2) rounded out the top-3 pitchers in the C class.

In the D class, young star pitcher Natalie Dilger took home the top spot.

She and runner-up Kevin Chael each ended their round-robin portion of the day with identical 3-1 records and went to a playoff match.

Dilger defeated Chael 13-10 in the playoff game to win the class.

She finished the tournament with a 4-1 record. Her lone loss of the day was a 25-33 defeat at the hands of Dave Skoglie.

Dilger scored a class-high 146 points and threw 22 ringers in her 226 attempts.

Chael’s record dropped to 3-2 for the tournament following the playoff loss to finish in second place.

He was followed by Skoglie, who finished in third place with a 2-2 record.

The NSHPA will head back to Pahrump this Saturday, June 3, for their Hot to Trot Open tournament at Petrack Park.

The tournament will begin at 9 a.m. and all participating pitchers are asked to arrive 30 minutes prior to the start to sign in.

Contact sports writer/editor Danny Smyth at dsmyth@pvtimes.com. Follow @_dannysmyth on Twitter.