Chuck Kasson

A lot has been going on lately...

First the write-up from Missouri's Strongest Man/Gus Memorial

(Write-up by Eric Todd)

First of all, I want to thank everyone who helps make this meet possible. All my family, in laws, and my wife for helping with the meal, raffle, concessions, setting up, tearing down, and cleaning up. All my timers, spotters, loaders, judges, etc: Mike P, Mark, Ronnie, Thom, Mike W, Delm, Matt, Vince, Andrew, Dave, and Leroy (hope I didn’t miss anybody). Mike W and family for giving up their Saturday to come help out and bring the PA. To my training partners for helping load the trailer, to everyone that helped load back up afterwords. A huge thank to my training partner Chris for making the awards. They are my favorite yet for 6 different Gus’s. All of our generous sponsors. To the Tullys for bringing out the tires, to Delm for bringing the axles. TO our spectators, who really were great this year. Last but not least, to our competitors. You guys did a great job laying it all out to do Grandpa’s memory proud.Anyhoo, on to the contest. We had tremendous battles in all divisions: In the masters class, we saw defending champ, Tim Nassen hold off John Obrien in his debut as a Master, and Dave Craft, defending 50+ masters national champion, who got 2nd and 3rd, respectively. In the lightweights, we saw Jesse Jobe outdistance the pack by 4 points, to defeat Zac Craig, runner up, and Lon Beffort, 3rd. In the middleweight class, We saw 2 time defending champ, Nate Butler get pushed to the limit by Charles Kasson. Nate held him off to get his 3rd consecutive title, with Kasson in second and Tyler Schuman in third. Lastly, the heavyweights was the most closely contested group of the day. The top 3 competitors were split up by a mere point and a half. Jeremy Moore walked away with first, with Sal Badali(2nd) and John Tilson (3rd) closely on his heels. We drew every name in the raffle and still had a few prizes left over. In the second drawing, we saw Jesse Jobe win the lot that contained the PL belts and ironmind gift certificates. In the big raffle, we saw Lance Foster win the bumper plate rack and entry to KSM. Going in, I was a bit concerned that our donation to Camp Quality this year would not be great, as our #s were down a little, and the economy being bad. Jesse Jobe summed up to me during weigh ins what makes me proud to be a part of KCSTRONGMAN. HE said (paraphrase) “I brought $_____ this year to put in the raffle. Our numbers are down, so we have to take up the slack.” And take up the slack they did! I haven’t received all the totals yet, but it looks like our donation to Camp Quality will be in the ballpark of $2400. A job well done to everyone that was involved!

Here are the actual results

We left at 5:30 am on saturday for Mirabile, MO. Not a bad drive, I nuked a mcdonalds pooper on the way so I was sure it was going to be a good day! We got to the venue way early, Sarah slept almost the entire way down. I was a little stiff from the 3.5 hour drive, so we went for a walking tour of the bustling metropolis that is Mirabile. It took about 10 minutes! Ha ha...I started warming up really early because my shoulder had been giving me some problems and I wanted to make sure it wouldn't be an issue. I weighed in at 261...right where I thought I would and continued to hydrate and eat (I never really stopped to try to make weight). I rocked the axle, I had been getting around 11 reps during training so I knew 15 was in reach, so I started counting backwards from 15 during the event. I almost had 16 but time ran out...no worries though, the next closest was 11. The next event was the front hold for time, long arms=painful front hold. The tire went well, I ended up second, but flipped my fastest time, the guy who won ended up only beating me by 2 1/10 of a second, and he somehow managed to only flip it 4 times! It was ok though, I won the farmers/duckwalk medley, I almost lost it when the stone started really swinging between my legs. By the time the kegs rolled around, I was tied for first with a guaranteed second! All I really wanted was to beat my keg time from Topeka. I smashed it, I ended up beating it by like 9 seconds. I had another 2 seconds I left out there just arranging the kegs after I loaded them. Live and learn! It was much better than before and I was actually in contention on the kegs instead of dead last.