Crokinole Lessons

Reflections on getting Shellacked

I’ve just returned from Charlotte where I played in the North Carolina Crokinole Championship.

What I thought was “an obscure Canadian game from a Southwestern Ontario childhood,” turns out to be exploding pastime in North Carolina.

Having played the game for the past sixty years, I tend to be better at Crokinole than everyone else—and that everyone else would be the ten people I have introduced the game to. Sometimes I buy them a board to pique their interest.

Recently I have discovered “organized Crokinole.” Having been a kitchen table player all my life, I generally made fun of the World Crokinole Championship in Tavistock, Ontario—rumored to be held in the basement of the volunteer fire department, with checkers stored in Cool Whip containers.

My buddy Matt and I have been playing for about fifteen years. We assumed during most of that time the scope of the known Crokinole world was about the six guys we knew who owned their own boards.

That may be the reason we were stunned when we walked into a twenty board tournament in the hallway of Le Meridien in downtown Charlotte. This is Brandyn’s show—he’s ranked 9th in the world. Gracious and welcoming, he has built a fantastic following and has raised the flag of Crokinole over the Queen City.

Friday night was the Singles Tournament—a bunch of qualifying rounds followed by the elimination segment. The exhilaration made me jittery—new rules/nothing but strangers—time constraints. Way faster boards than the hand crafter clunker I bought in Hanover from a retired dairy farmer with a penchant for joinery.

My “twenty game” was off. Matt did marginally better than me, but we must say we were both way out of our league. And who is Ben? Big friendly guy from Charleston who never misses. He eviscerated me in singles play and yet I left the table feeling like I had made a friend for life.

I don’t want to sound like Barack Obama after the mid terms—but we got shellacked.

This morning we played as partners in doubles—doing better in the qualifying rounds—but being completely destroyed in the first elimination round. Where did Chet and Trey come from? Both ranked as top twenty Crokinole players on earth, wearing matching shirts and going through me and Matt like a hot knife through butter.

Compared to them we looked “new to the game.”

There is a big time world of Crokinole out there. Incredible. Apparently the Tavistock tournament actually packs a hockey arena.

It’s astonishing how little I know about this game—and I’m super grateful for the Crokinole lessons received…