MINNESOTA HORSESHOE PITCHERS'

Ringer Digest

January/February/March 2025

A Charter of the NHPA

Official Publication of the Minnesota Gopher State Horseshoe Pitchers' Association

From the Incoming President

By Russ Girtz

Welcome to the New Year!

I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season with your loved ones. As we kick off this new year, I'm thrilled to interact with and support with our incredible horseshoe family. We have an exciting year ahead, filled with both sanctioned and non-sanctioned events where we can showcase our skills and camaraderie on the courts.

As your new President, I'm eager to learn more about our local, state, and national horseshoe organizations. Your ideas, questions, and concerns are invaluable to me, so please don't hesitate to reach out. Together, we can grow and achieve great things. A big thank you to Ray for his outstanding leadership over the past three years!

Our leadership team at MGSHPA includes Josh, Jerry, and Michelle, who also hold leadership roles in the NHPA. With Ben Webb now serving as NHPA President, there's a fresh wave of energy sweeping through our sport. I encourage you to read Ben's documents outlining his vision and opportunities for 2025. I'll be meeting with the MGSHPA leadership team to discuss our priorities for the year, focusing on introducing new pitchers to the sport and promoting pitching and volunteering. Let's all make an effort to invite someone new to join us, whether in your backyard, local league, or tournaments.

Please share your Club’s spring meeting dates with me, and I'll do my best to attend, either in person or virtually. I look forward to meeting even more of our talented pitchers across the state.

We're also excited to announce that we'll be appointing a new Nominations Director as we start the New Year. Recognizing the achievements of our talented pitchers, including our youth, and our dedicated promoters is crucial for our growth as a vibrant NHPA charter.

Lastly, with Lori York stepping down as Webmaster, we're delighted to welcome Sarah Nelson to the role. Thank you, Sarah, for bringing your skills and enthusiasm to our team!

Let's make 2025 a year to remember. Happy pitching!

Russ

From the Editor

By Jerry LaBrosse

I want to apologize for the delay in getting the State Tournament perpetual trophies delivered. The company that has been doing our state trophies for many years, Trophies By Linda, has been sold and is now Apex Trophies. The new owner has experienced some company issues which has caused this delay. He assured me that they will be done soon. I am planning to have all of the 2024 State Tournament Awards delivered in January.

Thank you for your patience, and I wish you all a Happy and Healthy New Year !

Regional Director / Stats Guy

By Josh Olson

Happy New Year!

2024 has come and gone and 2025 is going to be a great year I can already tell! Do you put any new year’s resolutions together for yourself? Long Term, Short Term, 1-week goals or even a day-to-day goal? Well, I will tell you what ever kind of goal you may have this year, I would like to encourage you to set yourself a goal to help out the organization in any way shape, maybe that is getting a new person to join a local league or even get a league member to go to new tournament or to the State Tournament. Maybe it’s a goal to play in more Tournaments this year, or attend an out of state Tournament, something like that. Anything that helps promote the game and involves horseshoes can help when it comes to doing your part to keep this game alive. This year will have some new Tournaments on the schedule that I would like to take this opportunity to remind you all about. The Club Team Tournament, and the 4-person Team Tournaments will be held in Genola on the 3^rd weekend in June. Two Team style events that you will not want to miss.

What is on the Horizon?

We have a bunch of winter Tournaments scheduled starting with the NHPF Benefit Tournament that will be taking place the 1^st Saturday in January at the Shoe Box in Darwin. Mark Smith had built a facility to house 4 indoor portable courts. Keep an eye out for when the Next tournament in Darwin will be. Becker will also continue to run tournaments each month this winter, Russ and Michelle will continue to co-direct and keep those going. Speaking of Russ, I would like to welcome Russ Girtz to the MGSHPA Board as the new President, and I would like to thank Ray Pierce Jr for his dedication and time on the Board as the past President, Thank you Ray, and welcome again Russ to the Board. Team World Team selection will begin as usual come February 1^st, 2025. Minnesota will sponsor our top 2 Teams again this year to compete in Beloit at the Team World Tournament. This Tournament brings in the best of the best in the Midwest and some other teams from all over the United States all competing for the Team World Trophy! If you are interested in participating in Team World again, please let me know, we are always looking for 40ft pitchers to complete teams and if you are someone that likes to pitch A LOT this is the tournament for you! Other Tournaments that are happening in 2025, The World Tournament is in Salt Lake City, Utah, this will be very exciting, and I think a CAN’T MISS if you ask me. You can fly right into SLC from MSP which is very convenient and appealing.

For now, I think that is all I have, I want to thank all the Tournament Directors for getting the 2025 Schedule out as quickly as we did, eShoe has all the information for the 2025 season and our MGSHPA website also has all of the information for the tournaments as well.

See you on the Courts!

Josh

South Vice President

by Jeff Washburn

Hello fellow Minnesotans.  We are under a winter storm warning tonight as I write this, but what would Christmas be without a foot or so of snow on the ground.   Four days after Christmas Brenda and I fly to FL, so am happy to report my snow shoveling will be limited again this winter.   I’m hoping Mr. and Mrs. Claus were good to all our Minnesota horseshoe pitchers and families.  This time of year means Grandkids’ band concerts, Christmas plays, dance recitals, and even a Karate award ceremony.  No, I didn’t take up karate, our grandson earned his yellow belt and proceeded to break his first block of pine wood in front of the assembled crowd.   Christmas time helps to remind me of what the most important things in my life really are, family, friends, and good health.   Hopefully, this season brings the same message for many of you, too!

For those winter pitchers, please keep an eye on our state website which lists upcoming winter tournaments to be held, as of today, in Becker and Darwin.  A special thank you to Michelle Foard, Russ Girtz, Josh Olson, and Mark Smith for their efforts in running winter tourneys.  A big thanks also goes out to Mark Smith, whose new pitching facility in Darwin will host its first tournament on January 4, 2025. Thank you, Mark!!    

I have already renewed my 2025 card, and this is a good time for others to do the same.  This can be done by simply googling eshoe and selecting the NHPA eshoe tab or going on the MGSHPA website and clicking on the membership sign up tab to renew either electronically, or by mailing in the form to Janet Roubinek. Lets each of us try to recruit one new member.

Finally, our thanks to outgoing Webmaster Lori York for her great work on our State Website, and to Joe Mueller for his efforts over the years as Nominations Director.

Here’s to wishing each of you and your families a safe, healthy, and Happy New Year!  I look forward to seeing many of you on the courts next spring.    Jeff

North Vice President

By Rory Pierce

Hello fellow horseshoe pitchers a quick message from your North Vice President, This fall and early winter have gone by extremely fast. Lots of things happening, this issue will hit after the Christmas holiday so I would like to take this time to wish all of you a Happy Holiday season, I hope it was great. Also would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. Lets make 2025 one of the best we can, new members and bigger and better tournaments. As I always say lets task ourselves with trying to bring someone new into the sport of Horseshoes this year. But above and beyond all of that I look forward to seeing you all again once the Horseshoe season kicks off again in the spring. I know there are some winter tournaments going on, but this time of year I am concentrated on Curling and Darkhouse Spearing. With that being said please everyone be careful out there on the Ice and be safe. See you all soon! Thank you

Sincerely Rory L. Pierce Sr.

North Vice-President  

Promotion and News Media

By Michelle Foard

Happy New Year All,

 I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. The New Year is here and before we know it leagues will be starting. For those of you who are changing divisions you need to renew with the secretary. Those who are pitching this winter you can renew online or mail in your renewal to Janet. 

 Russ and I have been doing Becker Tournaments. We had a full house the last 2 tournaments. We still have 4 more coming up. One each month. Contact me to sign up. Just make sure you have renewed your membership. 

  The World Tournament is in Sandy, UT this year a subburb of Salt Lake City. Just a reminder for the World Tournament you need 4 events to qualify. Those Tournaments need to be competed by May 19th 2025. If you changed divisions this year, last year's tournaments won't count. If you have questions on qualifications please don't hesitate to ask. 

 NHPA has partnered with Grouper. Grouper is a program for those with qualifying health care plans to get paid in increments, just for being an NHPA member and being active in NHPA events!  See Flyer Below

  To check your eligibility, please go to this link https://groupergroups.com/NHPA

This is similar to the “silver sneakers” program. I believe this is a great benefit to members who qualify! 

  As apart of our partnership with Grouper, we will also be able to have our logo displayed on their website along with their other partners including: the American Kennel Club, the US Bowling Congress, US chess federation and many other partners. This program is provided at no cost to the NHPA and is a free benefit to those who qualify. So please check it out!

 As the New Year begins I want to give a warm welcome to our new President Russ Girtz! I am excited to see what ideas he will bring to the table. 

Happy 2025 to you all!

Michelle

Reindeer Ringer Winners

A Class

 2nd Brad Heth, 1st Jerry Werk, 3rd Tom Prokop 

B Class

2nd Russ Girtz, 1st Denise Kleven, 3rd Brian Wipper 

C Class

2nd Mike Hoffman, 1st Barry Schilling, 3rd John Hustings 

Turkey Toss Winners

A Class

2nd Jerry Werk, 1st Denise Kleven, 3rd Jerald Hagen 

B Class

2nd Lance Van Wyhe, 1st Sarah Nelson, 3rd Don Claseman 

C Class

 2nd Mike Slininger, 1st Dennis Barut, 3rd Mike Timm 

Upsala Fall Tournament Recap

By Josh Olson

We had 2 full shifts come to play in Upsala, it has been a long time since Upsala has been the home for a Horseshoe tournament, I figure close to 6 or 7 years since the last Tournament was held in Upsala. It was great to see 2 full shifts which came out to being 32 pitchers for the weekend before Thanksgiving in Upsala. Class D was won by Todd Betterman (Wadena, MN) going 7-0, Chad Rach (Fargo, ND, originally from Bertha, MN) won Class C going 6-1. Myron Vanderweyst (Rice, MN) won Class B, and Dalton Rakestraw (California) won Class A Honors! Thanks to Michelle for posting the photos of the class winners, I also want to give a special thank you to Jerry Werk who helped fix a broken stake during our Class A competition, it was a good thing we played 40-point games, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have had a opportunity to fix the broken stake in between games fast enough. Jerry also stayed around and helped sweep and do some extra cleaning with my Family. We had great time, I did make the decision to halt on running any future Upsala Tournaments for the time being, a few various reasons behind that, and I am going to choose not to go into details and focus on a new potential site during the Winter right now for as long as Mark and Jenny Smith allow us to at there home in Darwin! Thank you again to everyone that signed up for the Upsala Tournament, it was great to be able to go back and pitch there once again!

Class A

2nd Harvey Burkman, 1st Dalton Rakestraw, 3rd Josh Olson

Class B

2nd Michelle Foard, 1st Myron Vanderweyst, 3rd Lance Van Wyhe

Class C

2nd Brian Wipper, 1st Chad Rach, 3rd Paul Anderson

Class D

2nd Lu Cave, 1st Todd Betterman, 3rd Barry Schilling

Publishing Schedule for the MGSHPA Ringer Digest

January-February-March

April-May-June

July-August-September-October

State Tournament Issue

November-December

Send all digest materials to the Jerry LaBrosse Jlabro6186@aol.com