GregMercer.ca Newspapering and other adventures

He shoots, he crokes!

The Guelph Mercury, 6/10/2009

I choked. Or, rather, I croked.

Earlier this week, I woke up outside an arena in Oxford County, index finger twitching, seeing doubles everywhere. I was at the World Crokinole Championship, in Tavistock, Ont., and I was getting the shakes.

Yes, that’s crokinole, the original Canadian wooden board game, the game of shooting small discs that separates the men from the mice, and all that.

What led me here was a bit of a blur — something to do with overconfidence and the belief a good old-fashioned college try would get you places.

Then I wandered into the rink. Dozens of round crokinole boards stretching from blue-line to blue-line. Hundreds of players. Men arguing over what speed of granular wax works best. Men who looked like they did nothing but play crokinole, 24 hours a day. Officials in neon vests reminding players about the one butt-cheek rule — it must always be touching your chair — and ready to enforce it. Yikes.

How bad could it be?

“It’s a bit like golf,” reckoned the reigning world champion, Brian Cook, who on Saturday took another $1,000 for the top prize, furthering his reputation as the best crokinole player on the planet.

Great. I had shown up for the professional golf tour equivalent of crokinole with a cheap, plastic set of Fisher Price clubs. And there were no suntans or beer girls to be had here — just the cold fluorescent arena lights and the sharp thwack of a hundred opponents’ shots.

The stories were coming fast and wild. There were reports of a man who was spotted doing yoga in the park before the tournament, to sharpen his focus. Pretty sure I saw someone injecting human growth hormone in the bushes out back. Where was Dick Pound when you needed him?

It was all happening too quickly. I met Carl Hiebert of Linwood, Ont., who says crokinole cost him $25,000. Seems this lifelong croke player was so confident in his abilities he bet his wife, Deb Hiebert, she’d never beat him four straight games. If she did, he’d take her on a trip around the world. In front of witnesses, the pair drew up a contract and both signed.

“I thought it’s not going to happen. I wouldn’t have put the bet out there if I thought she’d win it,” he said.

Carl, a photographer and motivational speaker, had his chuckle. That is, until two years later, when Deb won her four consecutive games.

Next thing Carl knows, he’s on a plane for Venice. Then Namibia, South Africa, India, Cambodia and the Cook Islands.

Moral of that story? Never bet on croke, kids.

Another moral lesson: don’t question who invented the game. Mention that Swiss Mennonites who settled the area may have brought it from Europe, or that the Russians, British, Indians and plenty others have similar games, and they’ll run you out of town at the end of a pitch fork. How Canadian is that?

No time to think about that now. A hockey buzzer bellows through the rink, signalling the start of the singles competition. The men in neon vests explain you’ll take part in 40 rapid-fire games in the span of an hour and a half. More specifically, you’ll have seven and a half minutes to play four games, and not a second longer. And keep those cheeks in the chair. They don’t mention that a bunch of farmers and tourists from Prince Edward Island are about to show you what’s what.

My final score? That doesn’t matter. What happens in Tavistock, stays in Tavistock, as they say. And besides, I learned that winning isn’t everything.