KLOCO NUMERO UNO

Kait O'Hare (KLoco) is the 2017 Chippens Tournament Challenge Champion. The fourth-year player from Chicago now has two last-place finishes and one first-place finish to her name. She is the only player in Challenge history to go from worst to first in back-to-back seasons. 

O'Hare said it feels "absolutely fantastic" to be a Chippens Champion. "I've told everyone I know and some people I don't know about my rise to the top," she said. 

As tough as winning the Championship is, O'Hare thinks it was easier than finishing last. "To finish first, my only goal was to not finish last," she said. "I overshot it, but hey, it worked out." 

It did indeed. O'Hare now has a Grand Prize T-Shirt to match the one earned by her husband, Frank O'Hare, who won the title in 2015. Although Kait said she will put her t-shirt in the couple's trophy case next to Frank's, that doesn't mean Kait thinks Frank's win is as impressive as hers. "Everything I do is more impressive than what Frank does," she said.  

Here at Chippens, we are always concerned first and foremost about the Greater Good. Kait is a worthy champion in that regard. As a parent and public school teacher, instilling sacred values into our country's youth is routine for Kait. 

She said she will definitely pass on what she's learned from this year's tournament: "I have taught my students t0 apply my strategy of forgetting that NCAA basketball is a thing for a year, and then cramming for fifteen minutes an hour before my picks are due to their own life endeavors." 

Congratulations to Kait O'Hare, a champion for the ages. 

Other Notable Results:

• Daniel Frognowski won a tie-breaker over Harley-Dog to finish in second place as this year's top rookie. No other rookie finished in the top 20, though Connelly Bowling showed a lot of Hart to finish 23rd. Harley's third-place finish is her best ever in eight years of competition. She has now finished in the top 25 three years in a row. 

• Valerie Corwin, always the tournament's most beautiful competitor, picked up her fourth career top-20 finish. This year marked Valerie's first year in the top 20 since her 17th-place finish in 2011. Only 12 players have more than four top-20 finishes.   

• Van Miller and Chris Schumacher also each finished in the top 20 for the fourth time. Schumacher rebounded nicely from his 98th-place showing in 2016 to finish 4th, and Miller finished 12th. Miller now has four finishes in the top 24 in the last five years. Both Miller and Schumacher earned spots on the All-Time Average Place list, with Schumacher debuting in a tie for third with Miller cracking the list at #10. 

• Congrats to Brandon "Big Baller" Gamble, who is now #1 in All-Time Average Place, dethroning Stump. Gamble finished 16th, his fifth top 20 finish in 11 seasons. 

• Stump falls to #2 after finishing in 88th place, 26 spots below his now second-worst showing of 62nd place in 2016. Before 2016, Stump had never finished below 38th place, and finished in the top 26 eight out of nine years between 2007 and 2015. His incredible run included finishing 1st (2008), 3rd (2015), and 4th (2011), plus three other top-20 finishes. He still owns the top mark in Lifetime Points (though Señor Wences is now clacking at his heels) and Pick Percentage. Will he regain the magic next year?

• Amber Myszka did not retain her title, but she gave it a good run, finishing 15th. She is one of just three players who earned back-to-back top-20 finishes this season. The other two are Leta Corwin, who finished 9th this year and 11th last year, and Chris Schiemann, who finished 10th this year and 7th last year. Leta moved from 7th to 3rd in the All-Time Average Place list, and Schiemann . . . moved up to 33rd. 

• Steve Wood is the highest-ranking player debuting on the All-Time list. A number of players earned their Five Year Rings this year to become eligible. Wood now ranks 28th. He could have been much higher, but was not helped by finishing 103rd this year. 

• The bottom four players are also in their first year of eligibility. Congrats to John Koster (86th), Sydney Penney (87th), Lauren McCall (88th), and Maya Corwin-Shah (89th) on earning their Five Year Rings this year. The four players have finished 81st or worse a combined 15 times, 90th or worse a combined 13 times, and they are a combined 6-time members of the Century Club (Lauren finished 99th this year, oh-so-close to making it 7 times for the group). 

Thanks to all for playing. Hope to see you again next year!