A Canadian National Statistics Center was created in 1996-97, called "CanStats" (similar to the NHPA's NatStats).
It gathers the ringer averages pitched by every Canadian horseshoe pitcher.
The standings show the ringer average of every player's best 3 tournaments, the reference to seed the
contestants and establish classes when needed. You can visit the following links about CanStats.
Statistics are courtesy of our Horseshoe Canada statistician, Sam Tomasevic.
The best way to measure a horseshoe player's performance is the ringer percentage. Back in 1923 (for the winter World Tournament), New York's D.D. Cottrell invented a scorecard (scoresheet) which kept track of not only ringers but shoes pitched, allowing to calculate the known ringer percentage of the contestants (by dividing the total of ringers by the number of shoes pitched, you obtain the ringer percentage).
In Canada, the first recordings of ringer percentages date back to 1933, a newspaper report stating that James Daniels won the Ontario Championships with an average of 63%. But it was certainly used in the first few competitions held in the 1920's. We know for instance that 1930 and 1932 Canadian Champion George Walwyn shot a high game of 65% at the 1930 Canadian Championships. Despite the fact that ringer percentages are part of our National competitions since (almost) the very beginning, they are kept with regularity in our provinces since only about a decade. This evolution was stimulated by the availability of personal computers and programs specially designed for horseshoe pitching. The pioneer in this field was the late Merv Lichty (from Waterloo, Ontario) who used his computer and designed programs as early as the mid-70's, a decade before anybody else. Imagine what it would take if we wouldn't have the computers to help us calculate (for example, the province of B.C. had 2829 tournament entries in 1994!).
Efforts are being made to centralize the information and standardize the computer programs (at a time there was almost as many as there were horseshoe organizations). A Canadian National Statistics Center was created in 1996-97, called "CanStats" (similar to the NHPA's NatStats). It gathers the ringer averages pitched by every Canadian horseshoe pitcher. The standings show the ringer average of every player's best 3 tournaments, the reference to seed the contestants and establish classes when needed.
The benefits of accurate ringer % averages: determines the caliber of the players, allows to divide people into classes where they play against opponents of their strenght, permits the use of handicap systems, eliminates the time-consuming qualifying shoes for major events. They are, of course, the best measure of a player's performance and is a good reference to set goals and reach new heights.
For more information about the Horseshoe Canada web pages contact Andre Leclerc.
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