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SOLON — I heard it a couple times here Friday night, and it probably was said dozens more.
“This is so Iowa.”
The scene was Solon Beef Days’ Hay Bale Toss, as much a part of the 52-year-old festival as its live music, carnival rides and steak sandwiches.
This was the 25th year for the bale toss, but it has no lost fascination with the festival’s attendees. Hundreds of people ringed the event site on Main Street to watch competitors toss bales of 45 to 50 pounds over an elevated bar.
Were it part of Festivus, it definitely would come under the “feats of strength” category.
Solon being just 15 miles from Kinnick Stadium, the annual participation of Iowa Hawkeye football players in the men’s open division only adds to the spectators’ enjoyment and memories.
Tyler Linderbaum
, now a stalwart center for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, tossed some bales in his Solon hometown once upon a time. Fellow first-round NFL draft pick/Pro Bowler
Tristan Wirfs
of Mount Vernon won the event.
As did former Hawkeye defensive tackle
Matt Kroul,
the committee chair of the event and its emcee. Kroul played high school ball at Solon’s forever rival, Mount Vernon, but the
Kroul Farms
he co-owns is about halfway between Mount Vernon and Solon. So he gets a pass. That he was a standout Hawkeye and also a good guy helps.
After the women’s and men’s senior division settled their contests, the men’s open division started. It had 29 entrants including Iowa state senator
Zach Wahls
and a half-dozen Hawkeyes. Five offensive lineman joined defensive lineman
Luke Gaffney
, a Linn-Mar High grad.
The opening height was 10 feet. The bar was raised six inches with each level. Several different strategies for hoisting the bales over the bar were employed, many to great success before the height got to be too much.
In the end, the “This is so Iowa” competition came down to Nebraska vs. Nebraska. Sort of. Iowa offensive lineman
Kade Pieper,
who won the toss in 2024, and former South Dakota State football and track and field athlete Wyatt Seagren were the only two to clear 12 feet, 6 inches.
Seagren is from Oakland, Neb. Pieper, from Norfolk, Neb., is a 6-foot-4, 290-pounder projected to start at guard this season.
Both were stymied at 13 feet, so they returned to 12-6 and both succeeded. Back up to 13 feet they went, where Pieper prevailed to repeat as the winner and receive a championship belt.
“He’s just a freak, man,” said Iowa offensive lineman Cael Winter. “He threw the shot put something like 65 feet (63-7 1/2 for a Nebraska state-title) in high school.”
Pieper didn’t go wild his back-to-back victories, matching the 2022-23 wins of Iowa senior offensive tackle Gennings Dunker.
“Doesn’t really mean a lot,” he said. “I just like coming out, having fun.”
The key to his success, Pieper added, was “just having fun and throwing it up there.”
Seagren is 6-foot-7 and weighed 245 in college. He was runner-up in the discus throw in the men’s university division of the 2023 Drake Relays. He entered the bale-toss because “My girlfriend’s from Solon. I just came to town to see here and she signed me up.”
As others started struggling, Seagren made the tosses look easy until the bar got over 12 feet. It was his second time in the event. He said he didn’t feel like an outsider among the several Hawkeyes.
“Everybody’s actually pretty friendly, so it was really good,” he said. “Everybody’s really nice.”
Seagren’s second-place reward was $80. The entry fee was $20. “I’ll probably have to give that back to the person who paid it,” he said.
Yes, this was so Iowa. Which made it a foreign concept to Hawkeye offensive lineman Michael Myslinski, from Jacksonville, Fla.
“I’d never held a hay bale in my life,” Myslinski said after the competition. “Being from Florida, that was pretty tough.
A Floridian winning this event might be as unnatural as manually launching a 48-pound bale of hay over a 13-foot-high bar.
“We had a pretty hard day before this (at the team’s conditioning drills),” Myslinski said. “I didn’t know I was throwing until two hours ago.
“I’m learning. I’ll be back next year.”
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