Brian Elliott’s attempt to win cow chip throwing contest falls short

Ah, September. The signal that summer is over and everyone is heading back to school and work for the year. That (usually) includes hockey players, but as we know that might be delayed a bit.

Labo(u)r Day weekend sees a lot of festivals, and in Wisconsin it means the annual Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw. In its 38th year, the festival took place over the weekend with male and female participants attempting to see who could throw cow chips (flattened, dry pieces of cow excrement) the furthest. One the participants was St. Louis Blues netminder Brian Elliott, who played college hockey with the Badgers.

A dry, hot summer caused droughts, which affected the competition by making event organizers to dip into their cow chip reserve in order to have enough for the participants.

Elliott's throw of 139.5 feet was, as he Tweeted, respectable, but landed well short of the 211 feet tossed by the first place winner and didn't even allow the Blues goaltender to advance to the second round of competition. According to the website, the state record for a throw is 248 feet.

There's always next year for Elliott, or if there's a prolonged work stoppage, at least he'll have time to work on his technique of tossing shi... er, cow chips around.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy