By Kyle LoJacono
Staff Writer
For the first time in the 78-year history of the Florida Shuffleboard Association five players from Zephyrhills made state masters tournament in the same year.
Those five are Wendy Griffin, Linda Marshman, Earl Ball, David Earle and Henry Strong. It is also the first time two women from Zephyrhills have qualified for the event.
“Zephyrhills is by and large where it is at for shuffleboard,” said Ball, who lives in Betmar Acres. “There are at least 100,000 people playing shuffleboard in Florida and we are highly competitive in Zephyrhills…They have great players all over the state, so to have five from here shows how great the shuffleboard play is in Zephyrhills.”
Strong and Marshman have already returned north for the summer and Earle and Griffin will follow soon. They all competed in the masters tournament in Vero Beach April 5 to 8.
Each year the top eight men and top eight women in the state are invited to play in the tournament. While none of the Zephyrhills players took home the masters championship this year, their mere numbers showed the level of play in east Pasco County.
Griffin, who started playing in 1998, placed the highest of the Zephyrhills five finishing tied for second. Ball came in third for the men, while Strong and Earle finished fifth and sixth respectively. Marshman was the eighth-place woman.
“The masters tournament is for the top of the top and it was my first time getting there,” Griffin said. “It was great to get a masters jacket.”
Those who reach the tournament receive a white masters jacket with the year on it similar to the green jackets worn by the winners of the Master’s Golf Tournament. Years are added for each season the player makes the masters.
While the experience was something Griffin had been looking forward to, it seems she has not quite forgotten the fact that she did not bring home the title.
“I just had a bad frame and gave up 29 points to the person that was the winner,” Griffin said. “If I hadn’t done so bad on that one frame I could have won.”
It was also the first masters tournament for Earle, who makes his summer home in Nova Scotia and lives in Forest Lake during the winter months.
“It indicates that shuffleboard is alive and well here in Zephyrhills,” Earle said of the record number of the city’s residents making the tournament. “I had a banner year. I made the masters and was inducted into the Central District Hall of Fame too…I didn’t really change my style this year. Just the more I played the easier it got and the easier it got the more I wanted to play.”
Earle is also the president of the Central District, which covers the area from Zephyrhills to Sebring to St. Cloud. There are seven districts across Florida.
“The other places where shuffleboard is really big are Bradenton and Fort Myers,” Ball said. “It’s growing in the north in this country and then again in countries like Japan, Australia, Canada and Germany.”
Ball, who made the state hall of fame in 2005, is no stranger to making the masters. He has made it each year since the 1999-2000 shuffleboard season. He was unable to play in the event in 2004 and 2005 because he had both hips replaced, but he still qualified.
When asked why he continues to play, Ball said, “It’s the winning no doubt. I grew up playing competitive sports and this takes me back to those days. It is physical chess to me because players are after each other like in chess, but it’s physical too.”
When he was younger, Ball played football and baseball and was a swimmer and cross-country runner. He retired in 1997 and thought he would be content playing golf, but switched to shuffleboard.
“Golf is more about competition with yourself,” Ball said. “I like shuffleboard more because you compete against the opponents instead.”
Griffin plays more for the all-inclusive nature of the game.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman or young or old, anyone can play shuffleboard,” Griffin said. “People just need to play that first game to be hooked.”
For Earle it is the people he has met at the courts that bring him back.
“It was the game that first brought me out, but it’s the friendships that keep you going and wanting to play,” Earle said. “It’s always fun to play with friends.”
The game is enjoyable for Ball as well, but he seems to play the game more for the competition than anything else.
“I get on the people if they aren’t giving it their best,” Ball said. “We have a reputation to uphold here. I want them to represent Zephyrhills as the best place for shuffleboard in the world.”
