NSHPA holds Fall Fling event in Las Vegas

Tom Grose won the Nevada State Horseshoe Pitching Association’s event held in Las Vegas over the weekend.

The tournament was a singles, sanctioned event with 18 pitchers participating in three classes.

This was the first NSHPA event since their Hot August Nights tournament that was held in mid-August.

Grose topped the A class at the Vegas Fall Fling tournament. He finished as the only pitcher in the tournament with a perfect record, ending the day 5-0.

Grose had a tournament-high 193 points and 100 ringers in his 200 attempts.

In second place of the A class was Joseph Kalache.

Kalache finished the tournament with a 4-1 record with his only loss coming against the champion, Grose.

Kalache scored a total 190 points while throwing 68 ringers, finishing the tournament with a 34% ringer percentage.

The third-place finisher in the A class was George Mallory.

Mallory threw 61 ringers on his way to scoring 171 points. He ended the day with an overall record of 3-2.

The B class had two players tie for first place, forcing them to play a sudden death playoff round.

Dan Dunn and Neal Schulte both finished with identical 4-1 records for the tournament.

Dunn came away from the playoff round as the victor, giving him the tournament win and an overall record of 5-1.

He scored a class-high 191 total points. Dunn and Schulte tied for a class-high 73 ringers, giving each of them a 30.4% ringer percentage.

Following the playoff round, Schulte finished the tournament with an overall record of 4-2. In addition to his 73 ringers, Schulte scored 149 points.

In third place of the B class was NSHPA president Lathan Dilger.

Dilger ended his day tied with two other pitchers with 2-3 records. He won the tiebreaker due to having a higher ringer percentage than the other two pitchers.

Dilger threw 51 ringers in his 200 throw attempts. He scored a total of 133 points on the day.

In the C class, Heath Russell went home as the winner.

Russell ended his tournament with a 4-1 overall record. He threw 41 ringers and finished with 133 total points.

The C class runner-up was Ray Leavitt, who finished tied with Dave Barefield with an overall record of 3-2.

Leavitt won the tiebreaker over Barefield by ending the tournament with more points. Leavitt scored 130 total points, just edging out Barefield’s 127.

On his way to scoring his 130 points, Leavitt threw 43 ringers, giving him a ringer percentage of 21.5%.

Barefield ended his tournament with 40 ringers on the day.

Despite not finishing in a top-3 spot, Fred Kennedy and Christy Russell each led the C class in a statistic.

Kennedy led the C class in total points with 152, while Russell led the C class in ringers with 48.

For their wins, Dunn and Russell each received a class champion patch, while Grose received a tournament champion patch.

Following the tournament, George Mallory won the 50/50 raffle and received a cash prize.

The NSHPA will hold their next event on Saturday, Sept. 24 during the Pahrump Fall Festival tournament, which will take place at Petrack Park off of Highway 160 in Pahrump.

The tournament will begin at 6 p.m. and all participating pitchers should be there at least 30 minutes beforehand to check in.

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