Open Loop #6 - Loppet 2013
2012-11-08: A conversation with Eric Goplin (Director of Minnesota Kubb and Team Captain for Tad Kubbler) about the 2013 Loppet Kubb Tournament (register now).
Transcript
Speaker-labelled transcript, machine transcribed and cleaned up with AI in October 2026. It may still have mistakes. Also as WebVTT and JSON.
Garrick: Let’s get Goplin! He’s there!
Eric: Here. Garrick, how are you doing?
Garrick: I’m doing all right. Hey, Eric, I scored the Dallas finals today.
Eric: I saw that. Brutal.
Garrick: That was so painful.
Jamie: You call that Kubb?
Eric: Seriously. Seriously. I don’t know. There was a Kubb tournament going on and then we just decided to stop playing. That’s how bad.
Garrick: I liked it. I like at some point midway through the game, everybody basically says, well, we stopped throwing eight meters.
Eric: Yeah, we just decided we don’t do that anymore. We’re like, we’re sort of like the opposite of vampires, like we just don’t play after dark. We just can’t. Yeah. I don’t— it was just nasty. If you look, I think, what is it, Cole and— no, Anders and Sean open up with eight meters consecutively at first two throws and then that’s it.
Garrick: But it wasn’t just you guys, it was Six Pack, too, for a literal cold streak.
Eric: Yeah.
Jamie: The overall throw stats for that were very much in line with a recreational game. Most tournament games, particularly at the end of the bracket, are like a 60 to 65% throw rate, according to the data that we have so far,
Eric: Yep.
Jamie: and that was what, it was like 35. It was about what you’d have at a friendly.
Eric: Yeesh. Well, and I think that’s kind of— it’s sort of a nightmare for an organizer. Now luckily with Dallas, I mean, it was cold and a lot of people had gone home. It wasn’t like the national finals where, you know, you had 200 people packed around the pitch, but
Jamie: But it was also six persons, so those are the first six person, aside from some games in Sweden,
Eric: Yeah.
Jamie: those are some of the first six person games we scored, and maybe that’s more in line with the stats for a six person game.
Eric: I hope— hopefully if that bails us out a little bit. No, you know, I don’t know, that definitely wasn’t indicative of some of the play I’d seen throughout the day though, you know. I’d seen teams really take it out other teams pretty hard, and I don’t know what the deal was once you get over the lights. Now I mean the conditions are a little bit different, but I mean both teams are playing on it, so that’s not really an excuse, you know, so
Jamie: Yeah.
Garrick: Maybe on a more positive note, I also scored some of the Loppet games.
Eric: Okay.
Garrick: And, you know, I don’t remember snow. At this year’s Loppet, yet there was snow for the teams I was scoring.
Eric: Yes. Yep. The final four got moved over to the finish line for all the races. I don’t know if you saw, depending on which way you guys came into the tournament that day, some teams had kind of taken the shortcut through the parking lot. The other teams that had gotten shuttled in to the tournament and into the park.
Jamie: Or gotten lost for about a half hour?
Eric: Yeah, that actually, that made up a good percentage of teams too. Those teams, if you came in through the chalet, you walked right past this big sort of finish line, you see the kind of, you know, structure there. So we moved over there for the semi-finals and the finals.
Garrick: Okay.
Eric: And which kind of created a cool thing. They brought in these lanterns, kind of like these jumbo kind of Coleman lanterns, and
Garrick: I saw people walking around with one, yeah.
Eric: they were five or six Yeah, one was broken so I just walked around with it. It made me look cool. No, yeah, that— and it was cool. I mean, on the snow, I mean, the light bounced off of it, so I mean there’s plenty, even the cameras could kind of pick up a lot of the action even with just those five lights. It’s definitely a cool touch. I’m looking forward to that again this year out on the lake.
Garrick: Absolutely. And I didn’t see a whole lot. I mean, it’s been months and I’m sure we’ve all gotten a whole lot better at inkasting, but I saw a little bit of sliding. This is the games between the Kubb Snipers and Sweden Sons. A little bit of sliding on the inkast and on the kubbs getting thrown in, but it looks like the snow actually is a lot stickier than I expected.
Eric: Yeah, it certainly was that day there too, because part of that was artificial snow and it had been packed down quite a bit. And then once it had been walked on a little bit, it was packed down. So yeah, I mean you really could. You could get a pretty good drill, I’d say even maybe better than you could on the grass that day. I mean, obviously it was so unusually warm that day when we were playing out on the round robin in the first knockout games, those were all on grass. But I mean, it was kind of a combination of frozen grass, mud, it was pretty brutal terrain. I know I talked to Josh Weathers and he was certainly having trouble with his drill too. But then yeah, once you get on the snow, I mean I think even a little bit they were kind of little holes starting to develop to where you could just kind of chuck your kubb in there and it would kind of land in there.
Jamie: You know, I’ve seen Josh Weathers goes out before each game and he makes a little hole in the pitch. I’ve seen him, you know, he does it.
Eric: Is that right?
Jamie: You know, I have seen him do— have you ever seen him do this? He’ll be down on his hands and knees and he’s in there and he fluffs it, he fluffs the grass right in that, right in the basket. He fluffs the grass and he gets any twigs out of the way and gets the grass all nice and perky and then
Eric: Okay, to try to fluff it up a little bit. Why not, man? The master’s got to get his. He has to get his tools right, you know what I mean?
Jamie: Hey. I need a beer. I don’t know if other people have a beer. Do you have a beer, Garrick?
Garrick: Yeah, of course.
Jamie: We are podcasting after all.
Garrick: I had poured the beer before I even got the mic set up.
Eric: Right.
Jamie: I’m going to grab my beer and I’ll be right back. Well, hey, this is Open Loop. Hey, Garrick, you know what this is? Number six.
Garrick: What’s this?
Jamie: This is number six. Yep. Lucky number six. Oh, wait. It’s actually number seven because we started at zero, remember?
Garrick: That’s zero.
Jamie: Because we’re kind of technical like that. And this is a really special Open Loop. And not just because I’m drinking a fruity beer, which I am.
Garrick: A fruity, like a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat.
Jamie: Yeah. No, like a New Glarus, the Serendipity.
Garrick: The strawberry rhubarb cherry.
Jamie: No, not strawberry. It’s just cranberries.
Garrick: Cranberry.
Jamie: Cranberries, apples, and cherries. Because the cherry crop in Wisconsin didn’t make it. Too dry. No cherries. So
Garrick: Oh.
Jamie: New Glarus bought every cherry in Wisconsin and then they added cranberries and they made this beer instead. It’s quite good. You know I’m a fan of that, of their Belgian Red. And I’m fine saying that. I’m fine with that. You know, you think what you will, but I like it.
Garrick: Yes.
Jamie: I know that a lot of people would say no fruit in their beer, but I have no problem with it. Especially in the fall. What are you drinking?
Garrick: I’m drinking my buckwheat honey saison, which is really not so much a saison, but
Jamie: Now I was going to say, isn’t a saison really a summer beer?
Garrick: Yeah, let’s see, a fall harvest. I mean, you gotta give your farm— your harvest worker something to drink.
Jamie: So you give them a saison. Are you liking it?
Garrick: It’s a little too sweet for style. I blame the honey. It’s
Jamie: I bet it’s not as sweet as my Serendipity.
Garrick: got a much sweeter finish. Yeah, the tartness of that Serendipity really stuck with me, and this has a much more balanced, almost sweet finish.
Jamie: Yeah, the Serendipity when you drink it, it makes you go…
Garrick: Yeah, like that, like that. Yeah, yeah. I like that. Eric, are you enjoying anything?
Eric: I’m enjoying listening to you guys because I can’t. I had my four wisdom teeth taken out on Friday.
Garrick: You’re dry. Wow.
Jamie: That’s right.
Eric: So I’m… I’m enjoying this little microbrew called Pfizer that fries me with.
Garrick: Ah, I see, yeah.
Jamie: I didn’t know that was a microbrew. I thought that was more kind of a…
Garrick: Painkillers. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Jamie: Hey, this is the perfect time to have you on a podcast.
Eric: Yeah, right, exactly.
Jamie: So today we have Eric Goplin with us, which is kind of this— it’s a different thing. I don’t know if we do this much. Eric’s joining us, and Eric… Eric is the guy who puts together Minnesota Kubb and organizes the Loppet tournament, which was the very first tournament that the Kubbchucks ever won too, and was awesome, and will be back again this year.
Garrick: Absolutely.
Eric: First, you guys are the first team to register.
Jamie: That’s right. Before it opened.
Eric: That’s right.
Jamie: So we’re hacking it all.
Eric: That’s right.
Jamie: All right.
Garrick: We got plans, Eric. We got plans to move up the bracket this year. So we got to start early.
Eric: I’m excited about that. I’m excited to see where you guys go this year.
Jamie: The bracket is all just based on when you register, right? I thought that’s how that worked.
Eric: Right. Yeah. You’re A1. You just have the number one seed.
Jamie: Good, good.
Eric: It’s all open to one.
Jamie: Just want to make sure. This year the Loppet is, this is the third year, right?
Eric: This is the second year we’re officially part of the Loppet. This is… our third Minnesota Kubb, third winter tournament. I guess you could technically say our fourth, but it’s really our third big tournament that we’ve actually had teams come in from out of state and taken pre-registration. We’ve doubled every year, so 16, 32, and then this year we’re shooting for the moon here with 64. I don’t know if that’s— I
Jamie: No, no, no. We’re going to fill all 64 slots.
Eric: hope so. You guys are definitely helping out.
Jamie: If I have to sign up every cousin I know, exactly.
Eric: I’ll put them in your group.
Jamie: Exactly.
Eric: Yes, so the second year is actually the partnership with the Loppet, and as we were talking a little bit about before, last year, due to weather, we were taken to Theodore Wirth Park, which was a fun place to do it, but this year the plan is to be back out on a lake, on Lake Calhoun, do it just west of Tin Fish Restaurant there, which is kind of cool. It’s where the ski race will make its turn up onto Lake Street, which will be flooded with snow, which is very unique.
Jamie: Dude, that’s going to be awesome. I mean, so the pitches will be right in front of Tin Fish?
Eric: Yeah, yep. There’s kind of a big, kind of natural patio there, and that’s where Surly will have their big beer heaven there, yeah.
Jamie: So like that’s— in the summer that’s where all the sailboats are, right?
Eric: Yep, yeah.
Jamie: 32 pitches set up.
Eric: Yep, just right off of Tin Fish, which would be kind of cool. I think the plan is to have this sort of championship pitch set up all day right off of Tin Fish.
Jamie: That’s where we’ll be playing, Eric. We’ll be right there.
Eric: That’s
Garrick: Yeah.
Eric: right. That’s where you guys will be playing
Jamie: Yeah,
Eric: at 7:30 that night.
Jamie: exactly. How many teams are signed up so far?
Eric: Right now we’re at 10 teams, which is
Jamie: It just got started.
Eric: pretty exciting considering it’s this early.
Garrick: November, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, last year I don’t think we had more than five teams signed up until sometime into December. So, eight
Jamie: Where are those? All Minnesota?
Eric: from Minnesota and two from Wisconsin. We haven’t thrown their hats in the ring, but I’m eagerly anticipating.
Jamie: No Iowans?
Eric: Really anticipating their registration, because it’s going to be a better tournament with all those teams coming, you know, from Wisconsin
Jamie: Definitely.
Eric: and it
Jamie: So first, is it Loppet or Loppet? How do you say it?
Eric: It’s Loppet.
Jamie: So yeah, so what if there’s a huge blizzard?
Eric: Yeah, well, first of all, how cool would the pictures look?
Jamie: It would be awesome.
Eric: There are two— two answers that I give people, and I tried to put together a little FAQ for people that are thinking about this tournament. One big question is, well, what if it’s really, really cold, or what if there’s a huge storm? We’re going to have, right out on a lake, there’ll be a bunch of fire pits that people can sort of, you know, if nothing else, just run to between tosses if they have to, but, you know, they can kind of hang out in between games
Garrick: Out on the ice.
Eric: if they don’t have anything. Yeah, right on the ice. We’ll have this big kind of— I don’t know if you guys have ever seen like the Luminary Loppet that they do. They kind of have these big fire pits that you think like, whoa, how does that work on the lake? But they’re just up off the lake, and, you know, it works really well. And then obviously proximity to like the Surly tent, which keeps a lot of people warm, and, you know, so like hot chocolate and coffee and all that stuff will be right there. And then our proximity just to Uptown, so obviously where we were last year is a little bit tougher because, I mean, the closest permanent structure was probably the chalet, which was, you know, quite a ways away. You couldn’t just run there between matches. But here, so we’re really close to Uptown, you’re close to Tin Fish, places that you can run into to get warm. And the other thing too is the way that we put the tournament together stresses giving people an opportunity to go get warm if it’s cold and if it’s snowing. Like a lot of tournaments, you know, you just play, and if you’re next, let’s say you win and you’re, you know, the next game game’s over, that next team wins, you know, you just play, you
Jamie: Right.
Eric: say, okay, you guys ready? We’ll play. One thing that I really stress is that games don’t start early for the Loppet tournament. So if you have a game at, let’s say, 1:30, just throw that out there, you know, I know the Kubbchucks like their grinders,
Jamie: Yeah,
Eric: but we’ll
Jamie: we play for two, three hours each match.
Garrick: Nice long games.
Eric: start the roll in about 15 minutes, right? Right, you
Jamie: Yeah.
Eric: win two games, now you’ve earned, you know, okay, my next game is at 2:30, so you can run somewhere, grab, you know, get your toes so you can feel them again, at least grab your Surly and come back at 2:30 and know you haven’t missed your match, or no one’s looking for you to play your next match. You just know where it is and when it is. So those
Garrick: That’s smart.
Eric: are the things that really kind of make it so people, okay, yeah, even if it is really cold, we’re going to still make this tournament happen and we’re still looking out for you.
Garrick: Yeah, that’s smart.
Jamie: And so have you figured out how you’re going to put the pins in the ice in
Eric: Yeah,
Jamie: the lake?
Eric: we’re going to just drill right into the lake, you know, just slightly smaller than the pin, and just pound that sucker in. I’ll use taller pins this year. There won’t be just the standard small ones, and then, I mean, they’ll be a little bit more permanent. I mean, for
Jamie: That’s going to have Garrick all up in arms. He’s so anti-pin.
Garrick: Anti-pin. I am voting no on center pins and pins overall, but
Eric: Okay.
Garrick: I don’t have a good solution either. We got the boys in the lab working on it.
Eric: You don’t like just the idea of a center pin?
Garrick: No, no, all the pins, I think all the pins are a problem, largely because it’s really difficult to set a kubb up on a pin.
Eric: Yes, right, right.
Garrick: And so I got the boys in the lab working on that.
Eric: Okay, yeah, I think there’s some lasers,
Jamie: We tried the laser thing. I got the lasers. They’re right here in my cabinet, and they don’t— here’s the problem. I think this could be fun. If we played a complete night tournament with glow-in-the-dark batons and kubbs, we could illuminate the pitch with lasers and it would work. And they would be like just permanently there. Red lasers. But if it’s during the day— so I got them, and during the day you can’t see the light. And then I went on this laser forum on the internet, and I described what I wanted to do, and the guys there are like, yeah, you would need a laser so strong that people would have to be wearing protective eyeglasses, and it would need like fans, like you’d have to have like this fan cooling the laser, you know, it’d be like in Real Genius, like there’d
Garrick: Yeah.
Jamie: be dry ice everywhere and
Eric: Really, we just sort of suck the fun right out of— well, I don’t know, like a fog machine.
Garrick: Wait, wait, wait, wait. I’ve got an idea. You said it will work at night, though.
Jamie: Yeah, it’ll work at night if we’re a night tournament.
Garrick: There are, I believe, there are in this area, 24-hour mountain bike races.
Jamie: Ooh, I see where you’re going here.
Garrick: If we could leverage a Kubb tournament during the night hours coincided with the 24-hour mountain bike race.
Jamie: No, no, no, no, no. 24 hours of Kubb.
Garrick: 24 hours of Kubb.
Eric: Oh, the—
Jamie: The one with the most wins after 24 hours. It’s just like the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Garrick: Tournament directors are crying right now.
Eric: I think the night Kubb thing is an interesting idea. I mean, I definitely— eventually Cole and I, when we first started playing, would play until four in the morning, you
Garrick: Wait,
Eric: know.
Garrick: there’s that one lamp down in Painter Park,
Eric: right? Yeah, and we would just, yep, use that one until the sun came up, until that lamp would go off.
Jamie: Seriously?
Eric: Yeah, well, when we first started playing, you know, it was a little bit easier.
Jamie: Is that safe to be in Painter Park at 4 in the morning?
Eric: Is it? Of course it is.
Garrick: You
Eric: Yeah.
Garrick: have batons, you’re fine.
Jamie: It’s true,
Eric: Yeah.
Jamie: I’ve got a stick. And I can throw it.
Garrick: Eight meters.
Eric: Yeah, exactly eight meters.
Jamie: Aaron Ellinger, he says that he painted his batons with the glow-in-the-dark paint, and because he plays, you know, Wisconsin style, they just get up at like 3 in the morning or something crazy, because
Eric: They play in the dark, but yeah, it’s
Garrick: Right.
Eric: right
Jamie: Yeah.
Eric: up there.
Jamie: And he said that he painted the batons glow-in-the-dark and it didn’t really help, like, he lights the pitch up, but he said that when the batons would go flying it made it really easy to go So they go find them. So,
Eric: Right.
Jamie: so it, you know, definitely can be done.
Garrick: I mean, I’m adding Wisconsin style to the glossary right now.
Jamie: Okay, great. That means what is it, so what’s the definition of Wisconsin style?
Garrick: Play in it in the morning.
Jamie: Playing before, no, playing before sunrise.
Eric: Yeah, before other Kubb teams are even awake.
Jamie: Yeah. How did you decide to organize a tournament?
Eric: Yeah, I think first of all there was kind of this natural gap between, I mean Kubb obviously was starting to take off. I mean it still is kind of in a pretty big growth stage right now in the Midwest and there was a big gap between Dallas and Rockford or whatever that first tournament is. And we were living, I was living in a house with Jake Freeburg. and Cole was there at the time and
Jamie: Honorary Kubbchuck, Jake.
Eric: like That’s right, that’s right.
Jamie: We’re trying to get him on.
Eric: We just like decided that we weren’t going to really stop playing just because it was winter and it hadn’t really occurred to us that we could do that and we just did.
Garrick: Which is fantastic because I don’t know if you know this, Eric, but it was the promise of proper winter Kubb that compelled me through my first few months of Kubb because
Eric: Okay.
Garrick: I could imagine how awesome this game is in the snow and I
Eric: Well, here’s
Garrick: have yet to actually play it in the snow, so I kind of still, yeah, we’re looking forward.
Eric: Oh, right, because last year we played on grass with a little bit and it was really kind of a weak winter. Well, the joke we kind of have at Minnesota Kubb is that like, hey, did you know you could even play this game in the summer too? You can even play this game on grass if you want to, if you’re really dedicated to the game.
Jamie: You know what I’ve heard?
Eric: You can play it with hot out.
Jamie: I’ve heard of people playing it on the beach.
Eric: I’ve actually never done beach Kubb. That’s one. I’ve played in like a blizzard. I’ve played through hail. I’ve never played on the beach though.
Jamie: That’s actually an objective of mine to never play it on a beach.
Eric: You’ve got to really work the accuracy there.
Jamie: I just don’t like, you know, the, yeah, too hot.
Eric: Nah, I don’t like the bikinis.
Jamie: Yeah, it’d be distracting.
Eric: Oh, yeah, that’s well. I usually wear a pretty distracting one when I play on the beach, so it’s tough for my opponents.
Garrick: That and the Des Moines shuffle, which is very distracting.
Eric: Yes, while wearing a bikini it’s very difficult for their team to focus. We kind of wanted to just play another tournament, so I kind of threw this thing together and I really didn’t know what to expect. And basically, you know, to register you needed an email address, you needed to be able to find me on the worldwide web and send me an email when you were in this tournament. And we ended up getting to 16 teams and a couple teams came from, well actually three or four teams came from Wisconsin, couple teams came down from Northern Minnesota to play and that
Jamie: Now that one was in Painter Park, right?
Eric: was actually at Lynnhurst Park and the plan was to do it on Lake of the Isles that year but that was the Snowmageddon year two years ago
Jamie: Yeah.
Eric: where the winter was just nasty. But if you remember, there was one week or two in February where it got really, really warm and Minneapolis pulled all their skating rinks off the lakes and
Garrick: That’s right.
Eric: so we couldn’t do it. Despite this nasty winter, we still couldn’t do it on Lake of the Isles. So we did it at Linden Hills Park, which ended up being a pretty cool spot for it. We had some lights there towards the end that were on, that worked out well as the tournament went on. And Eric Anderson and Paul Mullen won that as Sweden Sons. over Team McKee, which is Aaron, who plays on Wolfpack now, and his dad. They won that. It was local.
Jamie: Right, yeah, his last name is McKee, I remember.
Eric: Yes. Yep, that’s right.
Jamie: Do you still have the bracket from that first tournament?
Eric: I do. Eric Anderson has it, I believe.
Jamie: We gotta
Eric: I think that part of the trophy, you know, the trophy was like, here is some hot chocolate.
Jamie: Here’s the bracket.
Eric: Here’s the bracket. Yeah. Right.
Jamie: Because I’m trying to collect all the brackets. This is going to be one of my winter projects on Planet Kubb, is I want to historically get all of the brackets that are out there put into the wiki for, you know, archived events for those, just
Eric: Yeah.
Jamie: so that they’re there and, you know, won’t be lost.
Eric: Well, that’s great because I think, I mean, if you look back on even like the national tournament, I was curious about a bracket like last year or two years ago and I’m not sure if there’s really
Jamie: They exist,
Eric: Okay.
Jamie: but they’re like hidden only in PDFs. I mean, the World’s, the VM actually has a PDF that has its brackets as well as round-robin results going back, I think, a decade.
Eric: Yeah.
Jamie: And so I’m going to combine that with, ‘cause you know we’ve done a ton of stuff on this Planet Kubb game system and scoring games and stuff that Garrick was talking about earlier, but that’s a pretty heavyweight, put a win-loss in, but you can also just put a bracket in and the wiki will actually calculate win-losses for teams based on where they show up in brackets. So, you know, that way we can get more data about the win-loss record of various teams.
Eric: The big important thing for now is registration, because at the end of the month, registration will go to fifty dollars a team. So I kind of worked hard to keep that at forty, at least for a while. So it seems that teams that have played and can come back, there’s no price increase.
Jamie: So if you know you’re going to play, sign up.
Eric: If you know you’re going to play, sign up. And a lot of people, the Zap event registration that the Loppet handles asks for a lot of info, but really all I need is information for the captain. If you want to make up information for the second and third person, that’s fine. So if people want to sign up, but they don’t, you know, I’ve had people email me and say, do I need all this info for my teammate? No, not really. I just need to know kind of your team name, your captain’s info, and you’re good to go.
Jamie: It’s kind of weird when Garrick wanted to know my social security number.
Eric: Well, I was joking with Josh Feather, I mean, when he wins, we got to know where to send that car, you know what I mean?
Jamie: Exactly. Well, and the taxes. I mean,
Eric: Right.
Jamie: you got
Eric: Yeah, that’s a nightmare. So we got to get all that. All that handled for you.
Jamie: All right. What do you think is going to happen? So if we play, so assuming the weather’s good and we’re on Lake Calhoun, it’s going to kind of neutralize the drilling, isn’t it?
Eric: Walking back to the drilling, the thing is that we have the tie break scenario. When you come report your games or your matches at the Loppet tournament, you don’t report the games, so that’s not a tie breaker. So for example, I wouldn’t say Kubbchucks beat Kubb Snipers two games to one, you just say we won the match. And so if you end up with a group that is, say one team is three and oh, and the rest of the teams are one and two in matches, we
Garrick: Yeah.
Eric: wouldn’t go to the game tie break, we were going to have this throw off, which is going to be pretty exciting.
Jamie: Tell me more about this.
Eric: So at one o’clock after the round robin’s done, right, and this didn’t happen last year, I couldn’t believe it, eight groups and every group finished 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, and 0-3. I just couldn’t believe it. But so instead of, and so if there’s that tiebreak between, let’s say, you know, three teams that were all 1-2, all three teams will get up just like they kind of happen in Dallas. Everybody on the team will throw, you’ll get six throws just like you would a normal turn at eight meters, and whichever team knocks down the most will get to move on.
Jamie: That is sweet.
Eric: So we will gather everybody around, it’ll happen at one o’clock, and it’ll determine for some teams if they’re going to the championship bracket, if they’re going to the consolation bracket. We got into one this year with Sweden Sons in the semi-final, and the year before there was one in the round robin where, what is the team, rhymes with Kubb, a woman on that team hit, she’s in this throw off, we’re all gathered around and she hits one and it goes sideways and hits another one. It was just like, you know, just this super exciting thing and I was like, I’m sold on this throw off. So there’s that, which kind of is unique. And then getting back to your question about drilling, which kind of makes it unique, is that, I mean, it’s going to be tough to know the conditions, especially on the lake. We’re going to try to pack the snow down a little bit. I’m definitely not going to have it completely swept off, so you’re not going to be playing on like a hockey rink. The drilling can be completely up in the air, or depending on the snow, maybe it’s more of that kind of wet pack snow and then maybe drilling is easier than normal. I think it’ll all just kind of depend on conditions leading right up to the weekend.
Jamie: So we had a Kubb & Koffee. Was that just, no, it was the weekend before last. The ground was like a wet sponge, and it made drilling so fun, because the kubbs just went, and they just sat there. Even I could do it.
Eric: It was kind of like a… wet, foamy mattress kind of thing where it just was kind of like, yeah, just kind of went in and
Jamie: Well, it’s because the top, the grass actually was frozen because I got there before the sun came up and set up the pitches and the grass was frozen, and when Garrick showed up there was just like the sun was starting to come up and then it started, but it was still crunchy when you showed up, Garrick, right? And
Garrick: Yeah, yeah.
Jamie: then as the day went on it got kind of wet
Garrick: Okay, yeah.
Eric: mushy. When weather cooperates, not if, when, when it cooperates, yeah, I think you’ll see a lot of sliding and a lot of just kind of new people just playing around with it as it goes. I mean, even last year, early at any tournament you’ll see that the conditions change throughout the day where things dry out in the summer months, but yeah, who knows what will happen halfway
Jamie: Now Jake
Eric: through the day.
Jamie: Freeburg had posted on Ask Planet Kubb about making ice kings.
Eric: Yes, absolutely.
Jamie: Is that still in the thoughts? Or?
Eric: Yes, it is. Well, the goal here kind of is to have this championship pitch set up all day right in front of Tin Fish, right off of Tin Fish. So there’s kind of that balcony I was talking about and if people get over there or have been there, once they get there, they’ll kind of be able to understand how it works. It sort of makes for this kind of really nice natural overlook onto the lake, which will work perfect for the tournament. We’ll have this championship pitch set up there. There I’m thinking it’ll be a painted set, painted like maybe the Minnesota Kubb colors a little bit, blue, something like that, and then the goal is to have a nice big ice king in the middle with like a candle in it so it’ll look like one of the luminaries from the luminary a little bit.
Garrick: Okay, cool.
Eric: So that’ll kind of blend in and I think it’d be fun to keep throughout the match, but I think by the time you get to the finals people are gonna want an actual regulation king in there and not
Jamie: Oh, so it’ll just be for decoration.
Eric: I think so, throughout the day and that night. And I think when somebody gets down to actually winning, we can maybe substitute it in there. I’ll talk to the teams that are in the final. I mean, I think it’d be really fun, honestly, if I was in the final, to smash an ice king to win the thing. But go to minnesotakubb.com, that’s the way to go. Head over there, sign up. I’m trying to think if there’s any big other talking points I have. I don’t know. It’s just fun. We’re going to throw wood at wood, you know, out on the lake. And if you want to convince your friends, you know, you just say we’re going to go throw wooden blocks at other wooden blocks in the freezing cold, and they’ll be like, yeah, of course I want to do that.
Jamie: I have an idea for a tournament, but I think there should be a tournament where you have to bring your own Kubb set. Okay, and you play, and when you lose the match you have to go over and throw your set into the fire. Yeah, burn it.
Eric: You burn your Kubb set.
Jamie: Yeah,
Eric: Yeah.
Jamie: it’s like, yeah, you burn down effigy.
Eric: I think that would, yeah, right, that’d be very cool. I like the Dallas could potentially do that, like it’s sort of the last tournament of the year and you kind of like get rid of all your bad king misses that you’ve had in the past.
Jamie: Exactly. Eric, you’re also, as well as Minnesota Kubb and all that, you’re you’re also the captain for Tad Kubbler.
Eric: Yeah, I don’t know if I’m the captain, but I play on team, team Tad Kubbler, yes.
Garrick: How are you not the captain?
Jamie: Oh, if you’re not the captain, who is? Come on.
Eric: I’m a de facto captain. I’m the captain that Cole, I can’t leave it to Cole to sign up for tournaments or anything.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: It’s the registration deadline.
Jamie: Okay, all right, so you were the last guy to step backwards. So the de facto captain. And by the way, I loved reading on the Tad Kubbler site, a Planet Kubb site by the way, the kind of origin story behind Tad Kubbler and your
Eric: Yes, yes.
Jamie: trip to nationals and all that, which was
Eric: Oh, yeah. Totally by chance that we hooked up.
Jamie: super cool. So what’s the plan for Tad Kubbler this year? I mean, you know, Kubbchucks were a freshman year, so all we’re going to do is try to go one more round in the bracket.
Eric: Sure.
Garrick: What’s the…
Eric: Well, we’re going to, first of all, we need to stop this trend of moving backwards, and we went, that first year we took fourth, and the next year third, and then the year after that we got fifth, or tied for fifth, you know, somewhere between fifth and eighth, it’s not really, hard to say tied for fifth, because who knows how that would play out, but then again, same thing last year. I don’t know, you know, there’s so many good teams. It’s really amazing how many teams have… I often think of Kubb as this thing where it’s pretty easy to learn and kind of get, you know, okay at the game. And then there’s another big jump that teams take where they kind of start to learn strategy and they learn the drill and they kind of think about the way they’re playing. And I feel like so many teams in the last year, year and a half have made that jump up to these teams that really can compete well. So I don’t know. It’s tough. I mean, maybe our big plan this year is just not draw Knockerheads in our same quarterfinal.
Jamie: Yeah, I mean you guys played Yeah, I scored that match at nationals, Knockerheads versus Tad Kubbler, and that was just a phenomenal match. I mean, really was. So when you look at the scoring of all the games, it wasn’t the, you know, there were other good matches, no discredit to the other teams, but it was, you know, some of the best play in the final, you know, in the quarterfinals on. you know, statistically on par with the play that was going on in the final game.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, there’s something about those guys that really bring out the
Garrick: True.
Eric: best, you know. I mean, you’re playing a team like that and you just really have to step it up on every turn. And Kubb being the game that it is, if you have an off turn, it’s against a team like that, it’s just over, you know, right.
Jamie: All it takes, one.
Eric: You just, so you’re kind of constantly under the idea that like, okay, well if we’re not taking care of business on this round, this is it, you know. There’s that pressure every single round. So yes, it really starts to mount quite a bit.
Garrick: That’s really my biggest concern with doing all the scoring and having so much access to stats, is knowing four, five, six turns ahead of time, like, oh shit, we just, that’s where we lost it right there.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that is kind of frustrating too, and I look through this scoring, you’re like, oh, there it was, right there. I just look, yeah. That’s where I knew the tournament was over. No, and what’s fun too about playing those guys in the quarterfinals, as good as they are, like I wouldn’t want to, you know, playing them, there’s no shame losing, those guys are super good, and those are fun guys to play against too. I mean, it’s the nationals, everyone wants to win that game, but you know, we were able to kind of joke around a little bit and just kind of have fun in that game too, as much pressure as there was, you know.
Jamie: Hey, I have a question. This is a question about Tad Kubbler. You guys occasionally you conference. What do you do for those five or six minutes?
Eric: Probably five or six minutes. Well, for that half hour, for that half hour. There’s a good chance about 90% of that is me and Anders just giving Cole a hard time.
Jamie: I’m serious. You guys, you did it in the game that we played you guys in nationals.
Garrick: Which totally deserved. Like, you could have just, you could have done that forever and been like, yep, they totally deserved that.
Jamie: You put Garrick’s one penalty with, walk back there.
Eric: Yeah, that’s cheap.
Garrick: That’s right.
Jamie: And then I think you guys talked about the weather and like, I don’t know where you went last night.
Garrick: And then he goes like, hey, guys, where should we go to eat tonight? And that was exactly.
Jamie: Exactly.
Garrick: Right, right.
Eric: Well, it was my bachelor party that night, so we didn’t, we had to work that out, you know what I
Jamie: Is it? Is it? So I was, is this a strategy? Are you, are you staying the other team?
Eric: I don’t think there’s any that intentionally. I think part of what, you know, Cole and I love to to the point where we’re just dorks, right? And we love to talk about it, right? So like when he was in San Francisco in the Coast Guard and we would talk, you know, we’d catch up, and then it was just sort of like, how many minutes will go by before we start talking about Kubb, you know? Like that’s just, it was going to happen. And so we like to talk strategies before things happen. And so I think a lot of times, after we’re done giving Cole shit, you know, we like to talk about, okay, like this is what we’ve talked about, like here’s the here’s the situation we’re in, like what turn is it, what game is it, what’s the strength of our opponent, what do we think that they can do or can’t do, or what do we think we can do or we can’t do. So for example, like a penalty kubb, where are we going to put that down? I mean, I think it’s fair to run through, okay, like if we move it, well maybe if this can’t hit an eight meter, maybe we do put it at eight meters. But maybe we feel like, okay, can this thing even hit five meters right now? Like, are they just ice cold, are they just not feeling it, you know? Are they feeling a lot of pressure because it’s a tournament? So we might talk about that for about 30 seconds, and then yeah, just the rest is giving Cole crap.
Jamie: Well, cool guys, do you guys have anything else you want to cover?
Garrick: Good, this has been fantastic.
Eric: Yeah, thanks a lot guys for having me on, I appreciate you letting me plug the Loppet.
Jamie: Tons of fun.