SCORESHEET
We had great weather, minimal problems in the running of the meet, no injuries, and some great competition. While this competition was humble in it's beginnings, I think it highlighted why this will be a great sport. You had some real titan's from both sports showing how each can cancel out the other's advantage with the even split of events.
LW: 5 Time World Highland Games Masters Under 200lbs Champion Jim Spalding won this class. Jim is 51 years old! He's still an amazing athlete.
MW: Shaun Satterfield and Eric Todd had a titanic battle here with Shaun coming out on top. Eric was obviously overwhelmingly stronger than Shaun, but the Highlander isn't just about raw power and that showed in the final result. Shaun edged out Eric on the overall by barely winning the HG events and pulling upset on the farmers. Eric showed his domination on the Strongman events by blowing up the stones and the Continental Clean being the only athlete to load all the "Jackson" stones and hitting a 330lb Continental and just missing 365lbs. Shaun had one of the more amazing farmers walks by barely being able to deadlift the implements but the going for a full pull on the 120' course! I would have bet the farm he would never do a full pull after the struggle just to deadlift the implements......but then he just rolled!
HW: Terry Lawson is a HG'er that came in at the last minute to the HW class. He was reluctant to do the strongman events, but he became the first ever NAHA HW champ. He had one of the more amazing Continentals I've ever seen. He pulled the weight in about a dozen steps up his stomach and chest finally securing it in the rack position for a good lift. It seemed to take forever and he just kept gutting it out (literally using his gut!).
Master: This was a battle with myself, John O'Brien and Mitch Ridout. We started with the sheaf. My PR is about 5 feet over John's yet somehow I found myself tied with him at 28ft and he held the tiebreaker! I had to make my final toss at 29ft to win the event and somehow it crawled over. We went to the WOB and I found out that I had to do it standing. John was pretty happy about this as his PR on the 56 is better than mine. I pulled a 17' to John's 16'6" and won, then proceeded to spin for extra throws and hit 19', missing a WR "spin" at 19'10". On the Continental, John hit 25lbs over his PR to tie me on the event as we both got 350lbs on our third attempts. On the farmers, Mitch could play the role of spoiler, as John smoked the course with me a distant second. Mitch was tooling along pretty well, but his grip betrayed him towards the end. The hammer was mine and we then moved on to the final event. I knew John's dominance on the strongman events would leave me battling Mitch for 2nd place. If Mitch edged me out, John would win. I went first and put in my best performance to date on those particular stones. Mitch then followed and even though he gutted out the last stone, when I thought there was no way he was going to get it, I had the time to pull out the win.