Clan Heavy,

I’m turning 50 this year and have decided to retire from throwing.  I’ve gone through a lot of mental and physical changes in the last few years that I’m still rebuilding from, and I’m just not holding up well to the punishing nature of throwing anymore.  So, I’m doing other athletic things with my family instead, and we’re having fun.

I’ll never give up the barbell though.  It was always my first love, and I’ve got a great coach to keep me from flying to bits.  I can still dead lift more than double my body weight, so I got that going for me.

That said, the past 10 years as a Highland Games athlete have been among the most fun in my adult life, largely because of the people.  I was never good, but I was solidly mediocre, and I had the best time. 

Here are some highlights and gratitudes –

• Breaking 70’ in hammer, 25’ in HWFD, and 24’ in Sheaf for PRs all in the same games.  That was 2017 in Blairsville, and I won third in Masters.
• Duncan McCallum (who was already one of the top amateurs at the time) coming up to me on the field at my first ever games and telling me he would shag for us Bs so we could concentrate on throwing.
• Dave “Butterbean” Summers, Dave Fulford, and the rest of Clan Dave for teaching me to not take myself too seriously.
• Jay “Big Daddy” O’Neil and Hoss Lathrup for “Fork Talk”, farewell and adieu…
• The incredible John Owen spray painting his hand with trig marker before throwing hammer once because he mistook (or was misled, depending on who you ask) it for tacky.
• Turning my first caber in competition in front of my family after the same John Owen handed it off to me and said, “Don’t think about it, just do it.  You got it.”
• Winning Athlete of the Day and the Georgia Hussar Award at the Savannah Highland Games, complete with a giant claymore.
• Years of valuable advice from Craig Smith, the man with his finger squarely on the BS switch.
• Sean Langford for sneaking in and nudging the BS switch back the other direction.  I miss him so much.
• Technical help from Duncan McCallum, Jeff Kaste, Shane Southerland, Kent Durso, Nate Parker, Jake Sullivan, Bill Gray, Brittney (nee)Boswell, John McClain and a host of other wonderful people who went out of their way to help a little guy get better.  I didn’t deserve any of you.
• Mike Dickens grabbing my hand in the Dutch and Dylan Predator pose and yelling, “You son of a bi…!” at the NTKO games one year.
• Myles Wetzel hugging me at a game in Alabama just a few days before my father died and saying, “I love you, brother.”  That meant more than anything in that moment.
• The whole of the Highland Games community coming together to support my son, Duncan, when he was the March of Dimes regional ambassador in 2013 and raising over twenty thousand dollars to help prevent premature birth.
• All my fellow throwers in Tennessee (you all surpassed me fairly quickly), Florida, the Carolinas, and Texas.
• James Bullock for keeping me strong and keeping me safe.  Doctore est diabolus.
• Jason Clevenger and Mike Landrich for keeping me in equipment at reasonable prices.
• Bill Gray for embodying what the soul of a strength athlete should be.

I’ll be around.