TwistedCreations
Colt Python/SR9c
Team TCS wins at BattleGrounds
Pictures taken by: TwistedCreations, silvr_tung_devl and MommaBear
Pictures taken by: TwistedCreations, silvr_tung_devl and MommaBear
BattleGrounds were once again hosted by Tri-StateCrawlers and held at the Oakes Quarry Park, located within the City of Fairborn in Ohio. With the announcement of BattleGrounds being a USRCCA sanctioned event qualifier, I had contacted members of CentralKYCrawlers and SIRCC to help turn BattleGrounds into a two day 2.2 event.
The event had 90 registered drivers who were traveling all across the country to represent 13 states. However, due to uncontrollable weather on Friday evening, the rain slightly reflected attendance and did keep some drivers home for the weekend.
Saturday morning started off at 7:00 am with everybody driving into the park and setting up their pit areas. People began charging batteries, tightening screws and coming up to the main tent for driver sign in and tech. After all the drivers had signed up, it was 8:00am and time for me to call for the drivers meeting. Once the meeting was over, all 4 courses for Saturday were open and as Brian Parker says “It’s time to DO WORK Drivers!”
The event ran the free crawl format and it was the drivers’ responsibility to run all 4 courses in the allotted time allowed. The judges tried to keep things moving as fast as possible, but the courses were tougher than the BG staff had expected, due to the rain the night before. As the day went on though, the courses began to dry out and drivers were continuing to battle for those top 20 spots that transferred over to Sunday’s courses. The courses had closed and all drivers had finished running by 5:00pm and the four course scores had been added up. Going into Sunday’s event, Team TCS Driver Mike “rockshow” Rosenthal had a decent point lead over the competitors, while Team TCS drivers Joe “joesbruiser” DuRard was in 4th, Tim “Redbaron” Fleming was in 9th, Kevin “yukon635” Lum was in 11th, Cory "EeePee" Clifford in 31st and I was sadly tied in 33rd and was out of it. But I at least had 1 less thing now to worry about and could concentrate on the event.
The top 5 going into Sunday were:
Mike Rosenthal “rockshow” - 26 points
Andy Zuber “CRSmacgyver” - 56 points
Nick Justice “BTF” - 57 points
Joe DuRard “joesbruiser” - 60 points
Doug Johnson “djohn” – 73 points
Bright and early Sunday morning, the top 20 drivers came back with their game faces on and ready to battle the last 3 courses. Since the weather had really cooperated and dried things up great, it was time to kick the difficulty up on the courses. The rocks were bigger and the holes were deeper, so tire placement really mattered or it would cost the driver the chance of a top 5 finish.
With the event running so smooth and only having 20 drivers, all drivers were finished by 12:00pm and were ready for the announcement of the top 5 finalists who would run the finals course. The only driver change would be that Jeff Morgan “nitrojeff” had secured a top 5 spot and removing Doug Johnson out.
The finals course had been caution taped off since Friday afternoon, so no one had seen what was in mind for this course. Once the course was revealed, the drivers were amazed at what had been built and tried their best to tame the beast, but all fell just short. By this picture, we can see exactly what Team TCS Driver Joe DuRard thought about the finals course.
However, Joe DuRard was the closest to finishing the course, as he did make it just before gate 10 and pointed out. Mike Rosenthal had pointed out just after gate 7. While the other 3 drivers had either pointed or timed out on gate one, which was placed on top of a 10 foot vertical.
Teammate Tim Fleming helping Joe DuRard, as he tried to tackle the finals course.
Mike Rosenthal climbing the treacherous gate 1, while making it look like a cakewalk.
When it was all said and done, we had our top 5 winners with Team TCS on top and everyone had an absolute awesome weekend. With BattleGrounds 2010 finally over, planning for 2011 has already commenced to make BG even bigger next year.
Overall Top 5 Scores
Mike Rosenthal – 96 points
Joe DuRard – 97 points
Nick Justice – 149 points
Andy Zuber – 169 points
Jeff Morgan – 182 points
Congrats to Team TCS for taking home the win!
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