It was a surprise to me that this was our 6th year playing in the Minnesota Kubb Winter Tournament. When we were getting ready to play there was some discussion about it, and I thought it was our 4th. A careful accounting of the years brought it to 6 though, and as Eric Goplin started the tournament, we gave a loud shout when he called out any teams that had been there for six years, which is how old the tournament is.

Kubbchucks at Minnesota Kubb 2017Tournament

Garrick, Jim and I made our way to the pitches and took our spot in Group D. We played We B Kubbing, Ice Kubb’s YouKubb Channel and Little Lebowski Urban Achievers in the round robin. The Lebowski’s were the 2016 Consolation Champions. We were the seed into the group with our T-9 place from 2016.

We were able to make it through the round robin 3-0. Our match against the Little Lebowski’s didn’t complete, we were ahead 1 game to 0 and ahead on the baseline when they called time. We were close to closing it out but didn’t get it done. The winter tournament has strict 45 minute time limits for round robin matches. The Ice Kubb’s we finished pretty quickly with a 2-0 win and were able to retire to the warming tent for some chili and a beer. We B Kubbing we started ice cold with and couldn’t hit anything. We lost our first game but the batons came back, and we finished it out 2-1 with plenty of time left.

We went into the championship bracket and the round of 16. This is dangerous territory for the Kubbchucks, it’s where we typically fall apart and lose terribly bad. We steeled ourselves for it and went in throwing well. It all worked out, and we took a 2-0 match against a team that I can’t recall the name of. All of the round of 16 games ended quickly, so we moved quickly on to the next round and played Strike Without Warning in the quarterfinals.

Strike Without Warning took us down so fast we hardly knew what was going on. They hit pretty much everything they threw at, and we were out 0-2 within about 15 minutes. We didn’t have a chance. They also went on to win the entire tournament.

We had a great day of Kubb and left with our best place ever, T-5. We’ll get a nice seed next year which hopefully we will use to our advantage for a 7th year showing! If you’re looking for something fun to do in the winter and live in the area, you should get yourself to the Minnesota Kubb Winter Tournament!