Casey Ballinger wins Professional Railsplitting competition in 2022

 

[September 20, 2022] 

After a brief break for the reenactment of the christening of the city of Lincoln, the crowds returned to the competition area at the Abraham Lincoln National Railsplitting Festival for the Professional Railsplit.

This year there were seven competitors in the event. Those competitors were Jonathan Norin of LeRoy, Cody Friedlein of Downs, Zach Darnall of Bloomington, Curtis Prochnow of Downs, Evan Coombs of Bloomington, Lawrence Dubbelde of Mackinaw and Casey Ballinger of Atlanta.

For this competition the participants were required to split a large log into eight rails. The rules included that each rail had to be a clean split clearly separated from the others and all tools had to be removed from the immediate work area. A timing judge was assigned for every two competitors. When the work was done, the competitor was to call out time and then the judge would inspect the area and the split rails. If tools were not removed from the work area, the competitor received a 30 second penalty added to their finished time. If a rail was not cleanly cut from the others it would not be counted as a completed rail and the competitor would be disqualified for not having completed the task before calling time.

As the competition began, Jonathan Norin and Casey Ballinger started with a vengeance and ended fast. At one point it was anyone’s guess as to which one would finish first, but in the end, Ballinger won out with a very fast time of 6:39. Norin came in second but also received a 30 second penalty when he missed removing one tool from the work zone, making his finished time close to 10 minutes.
 

The third place finisher came in at 11:50 and it seemed to go downhill from there. Evan Coombs finished in 16:35 and Lawrence Dubbelde finished at 20:50.

The biggest challenge for the splitters was the condition of the log they were working with. Some were straight grained and split well while others were not straight, and it almost appeared that the log itself was made of tougher stuff than the others. Such was the fate for Cody Friedlein and Zach Darnall. Both men labored and labored to get eight rails from their log. Knowing they were going to finish in the last two places, Friedlein suggested to Darnall that they both call time at the exact same time so as to finish with a tie for the last place. For a moment it appeared that Darnall would take the deal, but then he hit his log again, and the competition was back on. In the end, Darnall finished his rails at 26:10 and Freidlein finished at 27:40.

At the award presentation, Bob Rankin, who acts as announcer and assists Superintendent (and daughter) Heidi Mueller throughout the competition, said it was good to be able to give Ballinger the championship certificate.

Rankin reminded the audience that last year the young man from Atlanta finished well ahead of everyone else, just as he did this year, but had to be disqualified because he lacked one clean split. It was a matter of nerves and excitement for Ballinger last year, as he would have had plenty of time to check and deliver that final blow to separate the last two parts and still win, but he was excited and just missed it.

This year, Ballinger had plenty of support from his family standing on the sidelines, including son Ryan who kept shouting out key reminders, “watch for splinters” meaning the thin threads of wood that technically hold the two logs together. “Toss the tools,” and of course the almost nonstop yells from the rest of the family “go dad, go dad,” rang across the entire competition area.

When Ballinger threw up his arms he was all smiles as he quickly noted he was indeed the first one done, and indeed it was all good, no tools in the work zone and no splinters between two rails.

At the award, his judge congratulated Ballinger and said he was sure thankful that he had not had to disqualify the Logan County man this year.

The top four finishers were joined by all the other competitors for a group photo, then young Ryan Ballinger asked if LDN would take a photo of him and his dad as the Junior and Professional Champs of the 2022 Railsplitting competition.

It was a proud moment for both the competitors as well as for the Ballinger's wife/mom and the other kids/siblings.

Throughout the weekend there are a number of smaller contests that competitors can participate in. As each winner is determined, a numerical score is assigned to the win.

At the end of the Professional Split, Mueller tallied up the scores from all those competitions, and the overall 2022 Splitter was Jonathan Norin of LeRoy. He was presented with a certificate and a cash prize.
 

At the end of the professional split, the competitions for the weekend were done. Guests still had some time to mingle and stroll through the grounds visiting the various campsites, but soon after the end of the competitions, everyone began backing up and putting away for the end of the 51st successful National Railsplitting Festival in Lincoln.

Organizers and planners were encouraged by the good turnout of visitors, and also with the number of people that participated in the competitions. They are already looking to next year, and hoping to continue building on a long-standing tradition in Lincoln and Logan County.

[Nila Smith]