Last Saturday Des Moines hosted the 6th annual Fall Kubb Klassic, and it was a great day! Beautiful weather (on Saturday at least, Friday was another matter!), a few new ideas (some worked, some didn’t), and a lot of great kubb and good fellowship.
The biggest change for us this year was the move to single games in the qualifying rounds. This format had been tried with great success a couple of other times this year, and it worked out great for us too. The teams were playing more opponents and there was less down time. We had a very competitive field this year as well; going into the 7th round only a single point separated 1st place from 6th. That is the meatgrinder grinding! Once again, by the end of the group rounds there were no undefeated teams and no winless teams – a tradition I hope continues for a long time.
We also did our best to move to a pinless field, but the conditions simply didn’t support it. The grass was too long (it had been mowed 3 days prior, but not particularly low, and combined with the rain late in the week the grass was pretty lush in the park), and especially looking from north to south the glare off of the grass was too bright to see the white-chalked lines so pins were a necessity most of the day. I think a combination of shorter grass and a different color of chalk might work… I remain in the “anti-pin” camp, but I don’t have an acceptable replacement yet. Will be sure to keep you posted!
I want to congratulate all of our top 8 teams, and especially Damage Inc., who won a thriller of a come-from-behind victory over Team Thurms in the Final, and also to ‘Shut Your Kubb Hole’, who overtook the Kubbesotans to become our first ever Consolation Bracket Champions.
Thank you to our sponsors JP’s Backyard Games, Corrosive Clothing, and Blind Photography; a HUGE thank you to Dana Oredson for the gorgeous team trophies for 1st through 3rd place and to Mary Tapken for nailing yet another tee design for us, and lastly to all of our volunteers for their help with set up, registration, scorekeeping, food prep and sales, cleanup, and everything else that needs to happen for a tournament to fall into place. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
See you all next year!
Des Moines Kubb Blog Archive
The now defunct Des Moines Kubb Blog was full of interesting and quality posts. For the benefit of the historical record and the greater kubb community, Kubb On is adding many of these posts, including this one.
