My FIRST
World Tournament!

Greenville, Ohio, was my candy store and the World Tournament had enough treats for everyone. I've never seen so many courts and horseshoe pitchers in one place in my entire life. I was in horseshoe heaven! I can't wait for next year at Bismarck where I used to visit my grandparents, and Hibbing, Minnesota, the following year! I grew up in a little town of Nevis about 90 miles from there.

Besides winning a World Class Championship, I had the privilege of meeting many of the current officers in the NHPA. One of them, the NHPA publicity chairperson, Billie Sue Pennington. Now there's a person who can get everyone excited about this great game.

Taking an Idea
from Billie Sue

Billie Sue has set up a page on the NHPA website just for publicity. She sends out press releases and posts newspaper clipping about horseshoe pitching whenever she can get information. She wrote the press release about the world tournament and had publicity people personalize it to send via e-mail to local newspapers. I sent out about a dozen releases with the 84 WSHPA entrants as the lead. I didn't see it printed in any papers, so I guess horseshoe pitching is still taking a back seat.
We have 15 sanctioned horseshoe clubs in the WSHPA and, hopefully, more to follow in the future. How much publicity does each club get? Very little, unless each club makes an effort to get out the word about their leagues and tournaments.

Here's how I want to help as
publicity co-chair of the WSHPA.

  • I would like all sanctioned clubs to pick up local newspapers, daily, weekly, or monthly, and send me their addresses, also their e-mail address. Just clip out the masthead, usually on the editorial page, and mail that to me. All the information is probably there.

    Send me the name and address, and e-mail address, of your community recreation director and department. A blurb about horseshoe pitching should be in your local recreation newsletters.

    Send me the name and address, and e-mail address, of your local cable TV provider.

Sometimes all of this information can be found in your community's local yellow pages.

These are three major media organizations that will print and post notices on horseshoe pitching only if information is provided to them.

Here's how publicity will work if I have the above information. Annual recreation newsletters will have an article about horseshoe pitching listing your local league and tournament schedules. In the spring, a notice will go out to print and cable TV media informing the public about your local club. All sanctioned tournaments will have a two to three week notice posted in print and cable TV. This can all be done from my home computer. But to get started I need addresses from you.

You can mail information to me. You will find my address and phone number listed in the front of the Ringer Report. If you have access to a computer, e-mail the information to deanMschmitz@cs.com. Let's talk more horseshoes in future Ringer Reports.

September 1999