Evening games delights crowd again

One of the highlights of the Tupper Lake Woodsmen's Days is the Saturday evening games, and this year was no exception.
As always the crowd, dominated with local residents, loved the excitement.
This year offered five male tug of war teams and the groaning and grunting of big men was pronounced throughout the contest.
The winners this year after some major struggles was the Lizotte Logging team.  A pick-up team of kayakers training at the Lake Placid training center plus Brent Bowman's sons Connor and Michael put together the second best effort of the evening. Their team was called Team Gutpa.
A team called Mossy Oak pulled third best.  Young Life had a team in it this year too.
In the women's tug of war Rope Burn, a group of local ladies continued their winning ways for about the fourth year in a row with another first place finish.
An offshoot team from that same winning gang, called Burn Rope, managed the second prize.  Some gals in town for a bridal party put together a third place win with a team called Merger.  The gals even treated the crowd to a patriotic song after the pulling.
Team Danny, another Young Life contribution, was the fourth set of ladies to pull.
By contrast to earlier years when as many as five or six teams tried to scale the grease pole, Saturday's climb only attracted two.
Back for their eleventh try up the pole to ring the bell was Tupper's best, Team Dozer, which is always dominated by members of the Skiff family.
For the first time in ten years, the agile climbers didn't ring the bell, although top man Ryan Skiff came within an inch or so of doing it.
Missing this year on the team was anchor man Ricky Skiff and in his place was Josh Dupuis.  Also missing from the line-up was Travis Skiff.  Back this year were Ryan Moeller and Chase Kavanagh and a new member was Joel Counter.
Although no bell was rung, Team Dozer was still the winner.
The other climbing team was The Bear in Camp from Young Life.
This year featured a team of women climbers, and some of the cast of Rope Burn.  The lady climbers were Michaela Warren, Alyssa Rupert, Crystal (Reandeau) Billian, Yvonne Sutton and Paige Foley.
Good job, girls!