The Ledge Games: Tyler + Josh Talk Flannels, Flying Axes, Supporting the TLG Cause

Introduction

Adam: This WiLL Cast is with Tyler and
Josh, who are the co-founders of the Ledge Games, which is a charity event that
you hear about on the WiLL Cast from time to time.

Becca: It's my favorite. It's my
absolute favorite everything.

Adam: It's a great event here in the
Fond du Lac area that's done and run for all the right reasons, as Josh and
Tyler will touch on. It's a ton of fun, it supports a great cause, and it was
cool to hear about the origin story and some of the vision they have for the
future of the Ledge Games.

Becca: It's a really genuine event
too. I started competing and participating before I worked at WiLL. So I liked
it before. And I actually marched up to Tyler one year — before I knew Tyler —
and told him that I could get TV crews to show up to the Ledge Games.

Adam: And we did.

Becca: We did. This year too. We have
a reporter coming in the week of the Ledge Games, so he'll be doing a preview
story. I can attest that it is an amazing event. It's got the coolest vibe, the
coolest people, coolest events. You're throwing axes and hammers and kegs and
all that, but it's raising money for really amazing causes. And I think the
number of sponsors we have in the local manufacturing community and related
industries — it's kind of a testament to what those two have created with a
small army.

Adam: The volunteers and the
businesses and the money that's been raised locally. And as we touched on, it's
not just huge companies — there's a lot of small businesses and medium
businesses and organizations. It's really a grassroots kind of team effort.

Becca: There are still a few spots
left to compete. We're always looking for more volunteers, sponsors, donations
— you name it, we're here for it.

Adam: Enjoy this WiLL Cast with Josh
Michaels and Tyler Ostrike, who are not only WiLL team members here at
Wisconsin Lighting Lab, but also the co-founders of the Ledge Games. We'll see
you there in a couple weeks.

Origin Story: Man of the Cliff

Adam: You guys co-founded the Ledge
Games. What's the origin story?

Tyler: I lived in Colorado for four
years, like 2011–2015. I was in Boulder. Some people I worked with and friends
kind of stumbled on this event that was held in Avon, up in the mountains. It
was just a poor man's amateur lumberjack competition. Any excuse you can have
to get up in the mountains in the fall and enjoy it — so we did that one year.
It was a two-day event. Had a ton of fun. Started kind of getting the itch,
taking notes. It was pretty obvious we were going to sign up and do it again
the next year.

Tyler: So Josh came out. I grew up
with Josh. I invited him out and said, more or less, okay, take notes. And if I
do move back, we've got to set one of these up, because I think it'd be a ton
of fun and kind of fits the geography and the lifestyle around here.

Adam: Is the competition better in
Fond du Lac at this point, the amateur lumberjacks, or is it better in the
mountains in Colorado?

Tyler: The highest keg toss I've seen
is in Colorado. Thinner air. But big mountain men are real things. Josh has
gone out there and finished like top five in that competition — I think
seventh. I would say it's similar.

Adam: How many years had they been
doing Man of the Cliff before you guys did it the first time?

Tyler: It started in Red Cliff,
Colorado. I think the first year I did it was like the seventh or eighth year
that they had. I think this is year 12 for them. They're still doing it, but
they skipped it at least twice during COVID.

Building the Equipment

Adam: What type of equipment is
involved? There's a lot of equipment to even do an amateur lumberjack
competition.

Josh: It took a little bit of eBay
searching for old kegs, vintage kegs, and then brainstorming equipment design.
We drove back from Colorado, that 16-hour drive, and more or less penciled all
the equipment out on that drive. It was like 16 hours of planning — axes, kegs,
targets, recurve bows, arrows, sledgehammers. And then every year, the design
and equipment gets upgraded.

Josh: Ax targets is tricky — finding
logs large enough and ones that the axes stick well in. That's a challenge. And
then just upgrading the design year after year on certain things so it goes
more smoothly, is more competitor-friendly, still maintaining a competitive
edge but keeping things fair. You essentially make a lot of it — the axes, the
targets, all the stands. A lot of the equipment is kind of homespun.

Adam: It's kind of interesting, too,
because about the time you guys started this, a lot of the ax bars grew in
popularity. I live in Milwaukee, and I started seeing all these bars popping up
with ax throwing. It's kind of funny how it just kind of happens at once. There
are a lot of similarities between Colorado and the Midwest — a lot of
Midwestern people go out to Colorado, and people are coming back too. Similar
vibes, other than the mountains.

Red Cabin at Green Acres

Adam: Where's the event held?

Tyler: We started in 2016. It's been
at the same place the entire time. It's held at Red Cabin at Green Acres, which
I think has a Fond du Lac address. It's kind of attached to Dotyville and Eden.
It's more or less out in the middle of farm fields, about 15 minutes southeast
of Fond du Lac. It's got a great open area, a little pond, some great ambiance,
food, beverages — kind of has it all.

Adam: A Midwest supper club.

Tyler: And we did not skip a beat
through COVID. There was some question as to how many people were going to
compete and show up, and I remember being there — people really enjoyed it. It
was cool to get outside and do an event that people felt comfortable at. I
think people were really happy that it continued.

Josh: We took some measures to try to
make it as safe as possible. But just being outside, it was a perfect time of
year. People wanted to get out and be around other people at that time.

What the Day Looks Like

Adam: What does the day look like?

Josh: We set up the majority of the
equipment the night before, then get up there early Saturday morning and set up
the rest. Certain events open up for some early morning practice before we kick
off. We usually try to start around 8 o'clock. There are six events total.
We'll do three in the morning and three in the afternoon. Morning we have
caber, hammer toss, and archery. In the afternoon, it's keg toss, ax throw, and
speed chop.

Josh: We run early rounds of the keg
toss throughout the morning, just to get qualifying runs through. And when we
have an intermission at lunchtime, we do an apple shoot — like the William Tell
apple shoot. Community members, spectators, and participants can pay a dollar
for an arrow and try to shoot the apple off our Bambi deer statue. I think we
hit it two or three times last year. People are getting better every year.

Tyler: Or more lucky. Bigger apples.

Josh: We do raffles. People buy raffle
tickets, we do a 50/50 raffle, and then there are different items donated from
local organizations that people can win.

Tyler: Last year I think we had 125
competitors. There's a men's division, a women's division, and a mentors
division, which was new last year — 55 years old and older. Throughout the day,
everybody competing — it's like a beehive. They're moving from stage to stage
doing different things. There's a lot of energy, a lot of movement, a lot of
things to be entertained by. It's an eight-hour day, but it feels like two
hours of fun.

Anyone Can Win

Adam: One of the coolest things about
the Ledge Games from a competitive standpoint is the variety of people and
skill sets. Anyone can win.

Tyler: Well, yeah — I never have.
Proven everybody else here has.

Josh: People definitely take it
seriously, but there's also people that just have a great time. The events are
all intentionally designed and modified for big, small, coordinated,
uncoordinated. We've never had the biggest guy on the field win at all. Or the
smallest. But they've both won axes. And you can take it seriously if you want.

Adam: Can you guys talk about winning
an ax and chainsaws?

Tyler: The way we have it set up is,
if you win one of the events — ax throw, archery, whatever — you win an ax.
Then we keep scoring for the entire event to more or less bring everything
together, and each division has a winner of the entire event. That person wins
a chainsaw. There's typically three rounds. Everybody competes in the first
round of the ax throw, the top half moves to the second round, then the top 10
move to the third round. Then we have a final and give away an ax, and
everybody congregates around and hoots and hollers.

The Cause: $44,500 in Scholarships

Adam: Tell me about the cause and why
you guys do it. How much of it is the fun versus the cause, and has it evolved
over the years?

Tyler: The main push originally was to
just bring friends, family, and people alike together for a fun event — to
build community camaraderie. Making money to donate wasn't a main driving
factor. It was fun.

Josh: The event is just fun. That's
it. And then it's a cherry on top.

Tyler: As that built and the community
got behind it, there's been an overwhelming willingness to contribute and
donate and support past just sustaining the event. That's where we teamed up
with Moraine Park Technical College and local robotics teams and other initiatives
in the tech and manufacturing space. And we still look forward for other
avenues where we can lend a hand or monetary donation that sees fit with the
mission statement of the Ledge Games.

Adam: On the sponsor side, there's
exposure, but there's also building a networking opportunity. We've gotten
connected to vendors through the Ledge Games and Envision Greater Fond du Lac.
There are some cool, almost unintended consequences on both the sponsorship
side and just the fun and supporting what the area does really well.

Tyler: I believe this is the seventh
year. The Ledge Games has donated $44,500 — or 78 scholarships — in six years.
That's pretty insane. And it sustained the event and grown the event.

Local Sponsors: Unsung Heroes

Adam: What type of sponsors are you
getting the last couple years?

Tyler: We had about 35 different
sponsors involved last year, and it's that number plus this year. What we've
come to realize and build into is, there are a lot of local manufacturing
companies, a lot of smaller companies — construction businesses that often are
just kind of behind the scenes, making things to operate in the local economy
that a lot of people don't know about. It's kind of turning into a cool event
for those types of companies to band together. It's almost like a celebration
of some of the coolest companies that make the coolest things in the area.

Adam: One thing that I think is cool
is, if you go to the web page and look at the small and medium-sized businesses
that rally around the event — small machine shops, excavators, manufacturing
companies, some service industry things. You watch the keg toss at the end, and
the entire fencing around the whole thing is pretty much lined in banners of
local support.

Looking Ahead: Kids Division, Qualifying Rounds & More

Adam: What does it look like five
years from now, 10 years from now?

Tyler: There are many ideas that get
thrown around. It's kind of a function of available time. We've kicked around
the ideas of doing a kids' competition. It is a family-friendly event — we've
got a whole area set aside for kids throwing foam axes and shooting suction-cup
arrows. We've got some ideas for side competitions like a two-man crosscut, or
spectators can join in. We love our current venue, but who knows — that may not
be available, or we may need to move at some point. But I think just continued
expansion of that idea of it being a local celebration of the unsung business
heroes in the area is something that resonates with me.

Josh: Looking into the future and
growth — the event in Colorado is a two-day event, and that can seem long
sometimes. We really designed it around a one-day event. We could always run
through more people, but then it cuts down on people moving on to the second
round and third round, and then it's just a little too rushed. You want to make
sure people competing are having fun and getting the most out of it. But there
are a lot of ideas floating around — maybe we could change out one of the
events in a couple years. Spear throw, pulp toss, hand fire starting. Right now
we've still been in the building stage, and I'm really comfortable with the
events that we're running. You don't want to make too many drastic changes when
people are still understanding what to do.

Tyler: A lot of the enhancements right
now are kind of behind the scenes, to make it less work to operate, which keeps
it exciting for the people operating it. Park the trailer at the end of the
year, open the door, and run it again. It's obviously not that simple, but
that's a lot of the enhancements now — making it more streamlined and easier to
continue to want to do.

Adam: Maybe in 10 years we'll have
qualifying weekends — three qualifying events and then the top finishers go to
a final event. What about a merch section on the website?

Tyler: There is a donate section. That
got added this past year because people that weren't able to make it still want
to donate.

Becca: We do have a whole line of
clothing at this point. There's sweatshirts, T-shirts, hats, knit hats,
koozies, kids' apparel. This year the apparel is next level. The T-shirt's
awesome. We've got crew-neck sweatshirts coming out, upgraded Carhartt ball
caps, knit caps.

Adam: Where do those come from?

Tyler: We have a partner out of Eden,
her name is Pat at Initial Design. She does a really lovely job. One of the
supporters. Super local, loves the event, donates a lot of her services.

Becca: And the shirt every year has
kind of turned into a cult classic — what's the color going to be, what's the
design? I've been getting questions from the volunteer gals who want to match
their flannel to the T-shirt.

100% Volunteer-Run, 501(c)(3)

Becca: It's 100% volunteer-run. I
think that's really important. And it's a 501(c)(3).

Tyler: Registered with the state and
federal. That was a big request for some of the sponsors — sometimes that's a
requirement on the tax side. 501(c)(3) — we send tax-deduction papers at the
end of the year, all the good stuff. But we couldn't do it without all the
volunteers. Big shout-out to them. A lot of people return every year.

Closing: See You There

Adam: Close it out.

Tyler: It's the last Saturday of
September every year. The website is LedgeGames.com. We have Facebook,
Instagram, all the good stuff. Sponsorship information on the website,
competition information, soon-to-be merch section on the website.

Adam: Cool. We'll see you in 15 days.

Josh: 15 days to train.

Becca: It's not practice — 15 days to
grow a beard.

Josh: It's 15 days, not 15 months.

Tyler: You don't need a beard to win a
chainsaw or the event.

Becca: I haven't even won an ax yet.
You guys have both taken me out.

Tyler: You're in the ballpark in
archery, though.

Adam: Your family's like a legacy.
Your dad really throws the ax. That's the only chance I have. I thought your
dad was going to cry last year when the guy broke the bow he likes to use.

Tyler: We really should have
interviewed Randy, because he might be the most winningest person.

Adam: The other cool thing about the
sponsors is there's this mini team vibe kind of happening. Drexel has a bunch
of people out there. Alverno is a sponsor — they almost got 11 people signed up
this year. Integrity Saw & Tool is a new sponsor — they're in the process
as we speak of registering four or five people. It's a really good
team-building activity from a corporate standpoint if anyone's looking to sign
a few people up, because there are spots left to compete.

Tyler: We're at almost 100 right now —
97 or something like that.

Adam: Well, very cool. Guys, thank you
very much. It'll be fun. 15 days left. We'll see you there.