04.21.2008
Horseshoes anyone?
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Dianna Guill of Mansfield, Ohio, takes aim before pitching during Saturday’s annual Carolina Dogwood Festival Horseshoe Tournament at Lakewood Park. Regan Hill photo |
With eyes closed, the staccato cling and clang could bring to mind the nearly rhythmic pounding of hammers of men working on the railroad in days of yore.
But the 240 participants in the Carolina Dogwood Open horseshoe pitching competition, held this weekend in Statesville, were not hitting railroad spikes.
They were nailing ringers. And many of them were doing it at a seemingly impossible clip.
Take 58-year-old Joan Elmore of Mt. Juliet, Va. Not only is Elmore the two-time reigning world champion in her sport and the boaster of an 86 percent ringer rate, but she once threw 56 consecutive ringers - a world record.
Like most of the shoe pitchers at the Carolina Dogwood, which is held annually at the Jack Springer Horseshoe Courts at Lakewood Park, Elmore is unassuming.
“I just had a knack for it, I guess,” said Elmore, who has only been pitching shoes for 13 years.
Paul Stewart of Troutman is president of the National Horseshoe Pitching Association and the coordinator of the Carolina Dogwood Open. He said pitching is like most other sports.
“You have to have natural skill,” he said. “But just like basketball or baseball, or any other sport, you’ve got to put in the time if you want to get good.”
Dayton Campbell is putting in that time.
Just 7 years old, he’s been pitching horseshoes more than half his life.
“He started when he was 3,” said his dad, Paul Campbell. “But he just started getting serious about it in the last year.”
How serious?
Dayton won the the 9-and-younger division at the Carolina Dogwood and has now taken all three tournaments he’s entered.
When asked what he liked best about pitching, the Mineral, Va., second-grader said, “Sometimes you win money.”
Brenda Tawney knows something about that. The Looneyville, W.Va., resident is an 11-time state champion.
For the past nine years, she’s been pitching a shoe called the Colt Six-Shooter, which is shaped like “W” with a wave on its inner sides. Before that, she was tossing Clydesdaly Deadeyes.
But it’s not so much the type of shoe Tawney pitches as it is the way she delivers it. “Nobody else throws a shoe like me,” she said as she demonstrated her backhand grip.
When Tawney releases the shoe, her motion gives it a three-flip ride to the post, 30 feet away.
This is quite different from most of the other women, who typically throw with a single, forward-moving, flip. Most men use a spin technique in which the shoe rotates in a circular manner as opposed to the end-over-end style of most of the women.
“That’s because there isn’t enough room to get a spin in 30 feet,” said Stewart, explaining that women throw from 10 feet shorter than men.
Like Tawney, however, Amy Hall of Virginia has an unorthodox style in which the shoe goes one and a half turns before coming down.
Hall said she throws that way “because that’s the way Daddy showed me how to when I was learning.”
Brandi Hall, who is not related to Amy, said her relationship with her father is also what brings her out to tournaments.
“I just like spending time with my dad,” the 17-year-old high school senior said.
Charles Helton, of Kingsport, Tenn., has a 62.75 percent ringer average, which would be good enough to take just about every backyard horseshoe throwing contest in the country.
But he has only won one tournament in which the “big boys” play.
“It’s tough out there,” he said. “There are always a lot of guys out there who can beat you.”
Stewart said the Carolina Dogwood was one of the area’s best kept secrets.
“This is our 41st year,” he said. “And I can tell you what, this is really good for the area.”