The town of Tonopah hosted the Jim Butler Days festival over Memorial weekend, beginning Friday, May 27, and finishing up on Monday, May 30.
Among the many festivities over the weekend were a couple of horseshoe tournaments that took place at Joe Friel Sports Complex.
The first of the two tournaments was a Nevada State Horseshoe Pitching Association sanctioned singles event, featuring 16 pitchers that were split into three classes.
In the A class, there was a three-way tie for first place following the round-robin event. Mark Kaczmarek, Lawrence Workman and Kasey Dilger all finished with identical records of 3-1.
Because of their tying records, the three pitchers participated in a mini playoff tournament.
Dilger won the first round bye and would play the winner of Kaczmarek and Workman.
Kaczmarek defeated Workman by a score of 19-14. He would move on to face Dilger for first place and Kaczmarek came away with a 33-29 victory.
This was Kaczmarek’s second win of the 2022 NSHPA season.
Workman would finish in second place and Dilger came in third place due to Workman owning the head-to-head tiebreaker over Dilger.
In the B class, there was another tie for first place, however, a playoff was not needed this time. Don Brown and George Mallory both finished the tournament with 4-1 records.
Brown came in first place and won the tiebreaker because he defeated Mallory 28-14 in their matchup.
This was Mallory’s third tournament of the season where he finished in the top two spots of the B class.
NSHPA president Lathan Dilger finished the tournament in third place in the B class. He finished with a record of 3-2, ending the tournament with 132 points and led the B class with 49 ringers thrown.
Danielle Workman took home top honors in the C class. She finished the tournament as the only pitcher to go undefeated, ending with a 4-0 record.
Workman finished with 184 points, third most across all three classes in the tournament. She also threw 22 ringers in her 200 attempts.
Tom Grose and Kevin Chael finished in second and third places in the C class. They each had identical 2-2 records. Grose got second place after narrowly edging out Chael in total points, 147 to 142.
Grose secured his place in the final game of the day by scoring 49 points with 16 ringers, both of which were the highest of any matchup of the day for him.
Sunday’s tournament was a non-sanctioned Southern Nevada Horseshoe Pitching Series event and it was a double-elimination style tournament.
Eighteen pitchers participated in the event. They were split into teams of two pitchers decided by their overall ringer percentage.
The team of Kasey Dilger and Cris York earned a first-place finish. For their win, each pitcher received a SNHPS championship patch, a trophy and they split 50 percent of the cash prize pool.
The second-place finishers were the team of Rob Cisilini and Tom Grose. They each walked away from the tournament with a trophy and a share of 30 percent of the cash prize pool.
The final prize winning team was comprised of Don Brown and Kevin Chael. For their third-place finish, they split the remaining 20% cash prize pool and they each received a smaller trophy to take home.
Lathan Dilger would like to thank the town of Tonopah for hosting the tournaments and the Jim Butler Days committee for supplying the trophies.
The next horseshoe tournament will be the June Bug Classic being held at Leavitt Park in Las Vegas on Saturday, June 4. All pitchers must sign in by 9 a.m. to participate. This will be a NSHPA sanctioned tournament.