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Northen and Anastacio top PIC pits
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Posted on Sep 15 2005
The longtime lords of underhanded artillery were finally crowned as the king and queen of the pits, as Rick Northen and Linda Anastacio topped a field of 30 arcing artists during Sunday’s 4th Annual Pacific Islands Club Horseshoe Tournament in San Antonio.
While anglers were practicing their craft in the deep waters of the Marianas for the 21st Saipan International Fishing Tournament, and the CNMI’s top players were engaged in the championship of the Saipan Major League Baseball Association, a determined group of top-caliber tossers descended upon the confines of the PIC in a battle of leaners and ringers.
After dropping the first match against mighty foes with near perfect throws, Northen and Anastacio found a way to come back to defeat Jon Cramer and Rachel Bandelin to seize the bragging rights as the pit pontiffs—but the road to the finals was not without bumps.
While Northen and Anastacio felt only a little heat under the sun during the preliminary round, they cruised through their first three matches unscathed. After winning a closely contested match against Mark “the Shark” MacDonald and “Spruce” Bruce Berline, 16-14, Cramer and Bandelin were relegated to the ranks of the losers’ bracket when they took a direct hit from Mike “Nuke” Johnson and pride of the United States Coast Guard Greg Schultz, 15-8.
The duo then breezed through their next four matches to get to the finals—including a drubbing of Dale Roberts and last year’s co-champ John Aldrich, 11-1. After emerging from the sub-par crowd, Cramer and Bandelin handed Northen and Anastacio their first defeat in the finals in only the fourth match of the day that required extra points.
Cramer and Bandelin scored an improbable 17-15 victory with timely ringers that put them over the top, but they were later out done when the dynamic duo scored an 11-9 win on the strength of Anastacio’s ringer.
