Bluegrass Shack 6th Annual Fiddle Contest

We had another great fiddle contest this year! This marks our 6th Annual July Contest, and it has grown so large that we had to move it to L&B's this year. We had a total of 40 contestants!

There are so many people that I have to thank. First of all, a big thank you to Marilyn, Verlan, Iggy, Chelsea and Janice for helping out at the doors. Our judges this year were Bill Barttelbort and Janice Nirscher, and Carla helped out the judges by adding all the scores and keeping track of everything. Bill took care of the sound system for me, and Iggy and Zane also helped out. LOTS of people helped us clean up afterwards -- WOW and THANKS! Also thanks to L&B's for hosting our event, and to the girls who work there who took care of all of us, especially Steph.

There were a few surprises, including having Geoff Seitz (of Seitz Violin Shop) come and enter the contest. Corrina is home for the summer and it was especially good to see her again. The Anderson girls and their mom (from Poplar Bluff, MO) also showed up. I met them at Grassy this year and it was a nice surprise to see them.

We had a quite a few new contest players this time around, with the biggest surprise being Flynn. Flynn has played less than a month on fiddle, and he won 4th place in his division! I really enjoyed watching Makayla and Allison. Kudos to Allison for coming out to play guitar. She did a great job, and it's really nice to see our youth get involved even when they don't play fiddle. We NEED good rhythm guitar players.

I cannot express to you how proud I am of each and every one of our contestants. So many of these folks I have known, even though they aren't all my students, and I am so impressed with their improvement and hard work. It makes everything worthwhile. Out of our 40 contestants, 30 of them were youth fiddlers. Our music is in good hands.

Here are the results and also some pictures.

9 Years & Under
1st - Millie Eisenhauer
2nd - Sophia Hasler
3rd - Brenden Wallace
4th - Nolan Neumeyer
5th - Nathanael Worthington
Most Entertaining - Libbi McClure
Youngest Fiddler - Josey McClure

10-12 Years Old
1st - Colton Dever
2nd - Paige Johnson
3rd - Rosemary Hall
4th - Caroline Stewart (Most Entertaining)
5th - Emma Neumeyer

13-15 Years Old
1st - Makayla Smith (Most Entertaining)
2nd - Dana Anderson
3rd - Emily Worthington
4th - Alex Skurat
5th -Aubrie Spinka

16-18 Years Old
1st - Rachel Neel
2nd - Charlie Hall
3rd - Joy Winkeler (Most Entertaining)
4th - Flynn Fauke
5th - Alyssa Lanham

Open
1st - Geoff Seitz (Most Entertaining)
2nd - Corrina Logston
3rd - John Bell
4th - Chelsea Perkinson
5th - Sylvia Mills

Senior
1st - Fred Pringle (Most Entertaining)
2nd - Bill Weiss