Page 39 - OCT2019 Digital Edition full

royal bbq Mudville BBQ wins 40th American Royal World Series of Barbecue Invitational Tom Gearhart turns lemons into lemonade to win the 2019 American Royal Invitational By Donna Fong Imagine that your 24th BBQ contest ever is the American Royal Invitational. Also imagine that your 10 year-old Dodge Ram has towed your precious gear for 1600 miles and you’re 150 miles from the Kansas Speedway where the event is held. Then the rear differential breaks down and you lose oil pressure in the engine. What do you do? Naturally, you keep driving those 150 miles until you reach the hotel. Then you call your wife and tell her that you’ve made a huge mistake by going to the Royal. You don’t know if you can cook against the best teams in the world when everything is falling apart. Well, if you are Lynn Gearhart, you tell your husband, Thomas Gearhart, that everything is going to be fine. Go out there and cook. And you tell him that you can do what you want with that truck even though it brought home each of your sons from the hos- pital and you bought it two days after returning from a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009. Tom started the engine the next day and got that trailer to his site. The cost of fixing it didn’t make any sense so he bought a brand new Dodge Ram, leaving the old one be- hind. With his wife’s support and a renewed energy follow- ing a chat with Luke Darnell of Old Virginia Smoke on Friday afternoon, Tom was able to gather his composure. This was not so much of a challenge as it was an opportu- Photo courtesy of Frank Boyer nity. Being overseas brought perspective. What is his motto? Take what is given to you. Tom is the head cook of Mudville BBQ, a reference to his hometown of Stockton, CA. Stockton was built during the California Gold Rush days and one of the nicknames the residents had for Stockton was Mudville. Raised in Stock- ton, CA, he moved to Spokane for college and then served in the Army from 2006 to 2012. After he was finished with his tour, Tom stayed in Springfield, Virginia until 2018. It was during his time in Springfield that he started his BBQ team in 2015. Then in July 2018, he moved back to Califor- nia to be with family and now calls Ro- seville, CA his home. His teammates are Greg and Jeff Gearhart, his younger brothers, and a rotating group of friends, Brian Shirk, Matt Shirk and Phil Kost. How- ever, Greg re- mains his right hand man. Mudville BBQ qualified for the Royal by winning Throw- down in the Vineyards in Murphys, CA in June. There were 20 teams. He won what was his 18th contest. He wasn’t sure about going to the Royal. But with encouragement from his wife, Tom took the opportunity to attend the Invi- tational and won it. Tom not only won it but did so with walks in every category! Congratulations to Mudville BBQ on a great cook and win- ning the World Series of BBQ Invitational. OCTOBER 2019 BarbecueNews.com - 39