A record 129 players started the season in April, and at the end of the day, through a lengthy regular season that saw far too many rain outs and an extended season, Rod Kacin emerged from the closest year ending battle in Lernerville Pick'Em history to claim his first ever Lernerville Pick'Em Championship!
Joining Rod on the podium will be five year veteran Andew Loria, who had an amazing season and second year player Jeff Compton. They were pushed hard by Steven Prince who, as Loria did, led the standings at various points of the season and Tom Schwarzl who was in contention nearly all season long.
Taking home the David Gardham Memorial Rookie of the Year Award will be Kaleb Dietz!
The top 10 points finishers will all be placed in our TDN National Pick'Em Hall of Fame. Congrats to all of you on an outstanding season!
And lastly, some thanks are in order. Firstly, a huge thank you to Nick Yon at Turner's Premium Iced Tea who saw the game's potential and offered to sponsor what we do two years ago, doubling the prizes we were able to provide instantly!
Secondly, thank you Frank Iudiciani who scored this year's game and also kept the season scoring updated as well as week by week. It's truly a labor of love to spend multiple hours a week entering all the data, and then giving up weekend hours to score everything with little in the way of reward! Frank does it, because he loves the game and has been a part of it for more years than some of you have been playing, and if it weren't for him stepping two years ago to take over the position, it wouldn't be the same game. We were considering cutting off the top 50 players after a month of playing and just keeping the title between those players and closing off the game to everyone else back in April of 2016 as there was almost no spare time once other obligations suddenly were asked of us at TDN from Lernerville itself and other people who were interested in purchasing our work, but Frank came through so we could keep the game at a high level!
Finally, thank you for playing, every single one of you! I have said on several occasions, that if it weren't for Lernerville Pick'Em, there would have never been a Dirt Network as it was started initially as a place simply to house the contest. I will never forget what I told several of you in November of 2014, "I've reserved a free blog site, if nothing else, we can at least continue to play Lernerville Pick'Em now that Fantasy Dirt Racing has closed for good, and maybe I'll write a little too, I've always wanted to see what it was like, wanna join?"
It is because of all you long time players, that TDN exists and for that I will be forever grateful!
Thanks so much for a great season and we'll see you in 2018!! Have a great Holiday time with your friends and family!!
- Gary Heeman
Final 2017 Standings:
This is great.
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