(upbeat music) (keyboard clicking) (mouse clicking) (upbeat music) (mouse clicks) (upbeat music) (car engine rumbles) (upbeat music) (car engine rumbles) (keyboard clicking) (mouse clicks) - I think the reason I have been successful is that I have a God-given ability.

I was blessed with some hand-eye coordination and with horseshoes, there's a lot of precision involved in horseshoes.

So a lot of elements go into throwing a ringer and I figured out how to be good at it and figured out how to stay good at it.

I've had 26 men's world titles.

I was also a Junior World Champion four consecutive years.

In all, I've won 30 World Championships since the age of 12.

(horseshoe clanks) (mellow music) I give my dad credit, maybe my granddad credit, because he really was the instigator, I'll call him.

And then my mom entered us into the state horseshoe tournament.

That was in 1979.

So we went to St. Joe, Missouri and competed in the state tournament that year.

And from there we were totally hooked.

I am surprised that the amount of success I've had.

I always felt like I could be a World Champion.

And I remember when I was, you know, 10 years old saying, "I think I can be a world champion."

And that's what I wanted to be.

And then when I was 12, I got my first one so that was a big deal.

But to kind of look back and see the number of World Championships I've won, never would've guessed or even thought or even dreamed that maybe I would win that many.

- He's a very humble pitcher so he doesn't let the ego get involved with his competition.

He knows he can be beaten at any moment and he respects his competitors.

He respects the game.

(mellow music) - I have lost several World Championships.

In general, probably even the years that I didn't win or wasn't World Champion, I probably had the best ringer percentage, you know, so I was throwing more ringers in general than my opponents.

I just lost a couple of key games along the way.

And that's just what it's, that's the way it is.

And the wins wouldn't mean nearly as much without those losses.

So that's the way I try to look at it.

Like I said, you grow from the times that you're not the victor.

You grow from those and you learn and you become better.

Everything I do with horseshoe seems to be geared around preparing for the World Tournament and World Championship.

(mellow music) The local tournaments that we have here in Ohio that we travel to, that's the best way for me to prepare is, you know, I practice at home, but that alone doesn't prepare me for that.

It's the small tournaments that I go to that has pretty good competition.

That's what gets me prepared for the World Championship.

(mellow music) (horseshoe clanking) (horseshoe clanking) (horseshoe clanking) (horseshoe clanking) (mellow music) (horseshoe clanking) I don't know that there are any secrets, although I get questioned by it a lot.

You know, what's your technique?

What's the most important thing that you do that makes you good?

I talk about balance a lot.

I think that's key to being precise, is the balance that you maintain throughout your pitch.

You've got all aspects.

You've got downswing, you've got upswing, you've got how big is your step?

And just putting all of that together as a kind of a fluid motion is really what you have to strive for.

I've just been blessed to have people around me that I could continue to play and enjoy the sport.

I've had jobs that have allowed me to travel, time off.

And then I was blessed with a wife who came from a horseshoe pitching family.

(laughs) I mean, it doesn't get any better than that either.

'Cause she enjoys it right along with me.

It's not a chore for me to have to do.

She encourages me and travels with me.

And actually I probably wouldn't play as much as I do if not for her.

- [Amy] Alan has this uncanny way of being able to get in the zone.

And when people ask him what do you think about when you're pitching?

He says, I think about making a ringer.

What else are you thinking about?

Nothing.

(mellow music) (horseshoe clanking) - Well, ringer percentage, that's kind of how you gauge how good you are.

You gauge it by wins, tournament wins, victories, but in general, horseshoe pitchers talk about their ringer percentage.

When I think of 90%s, I think of the world tournaments that I've averaged 90%.

To throw a game of 90% for a horseshoe pitcher, I mean, that's like a game of a lifetime.

But for me to look back and think that I averaged for a whole tournament, for a three day event, 15 games, 20 games, whatever it was.

And to average 90% for all of that, I'm very proud of that because that is, had never been done at the World Tournament in the history of horseshoe, never been done.

And I did it for the first time in 2009 and then I thought that's probably the pinnacle of my pitching career.

And then I accomplished that twice again, since then.

But I still think I have more left in me.

I think I'm young enough and and still playing well enough that I can still, I can win more world championships.

And I plan to.

(mellow music) (horseshoes clanking) (mellow music) (horseshoes clanking) (mellow music) (horseshoes clanking) (audience applauding) Today I had five games.

So the competition just got stiffer every game.

Me be coming in the number one seat, I had to play the the five guys right below me, kind of in order.

So it ended up being Drew and I, the number two guy, for the last game and for the title.

(mellow music) (horseshoes clanking) (audience applauding) - [Announcer] We'll finish up here with a perfect record of 15-0.

A ringer percent of 85.56.

Now 27- time Male World Champion from Ohio (audience cheering,applauding) Alan Francis - So this is championship number 27.

It's 11 consecutive.

So that's a new world record.

They're both new world records.

You know, it never gets old.

People ask me that after so many, does it get old?

It never gets old.

As a competitor, I always want to win.

I always think I can do a little better than I did the last time.

And I got a whole crop of younger guys coming up that are really getting good.

So I'm going to try to hold 'em off as long as I can.

They'll get me eventually.

But for now I still have what it takes, I think, to be World Champion.

(upbeat music) - Here at the Pro Football Hall of Fame we have a design team of three people.

I am one of the graphic designers.

We actually design a 30 by 40 foot banner every year that sits on the side of the building.

And I got the opportunity to design that this year.

(upbeat music) (keyboard clicking) (mouse clicking) Hi, my name is Sara Wehner and I am a graphic designer here at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

(upbeat music) I went to Bowling Green State University and I studied visual communication technology and I specialized in print design.

I would say my experience in design really started when I started yearbook.

I was really into layout design.

And once I started doing that I really realized how much design is around you.

Like once you start looking, you have billboards and logos and all this stuff.

I had never done any sort of graphic design besides, you know, yearbook layout design.

I just, I was always into art so I knew that, you know, it was something I could try and I learned all through college.

I had no idea what I was doing when I first started there.

At first I didn't think I'd be into sports.

I was more of a, you know, creative agency, just working for a lot of different brands.

But seeing the fun and seeing the hype behind the posts when you post them or just seeing how excited they get, people, it makes it rewarding to be doing those designs.

One of the main projects that I've worked on since being here and designing for is the 2023 class announcement for the new class of Hall of Famers.

We actually design a 30 by 40 foot banner every year that sits on the side of the building.

And I got the opportunity to design that this year.

So when we're designing for something like this the first thing we do is we reach out to all the individual players and teams and see what headshots we can get from them for this.

And then we kind of lay them all out and see which ones the guys are comfortable with because sometimes we might think a picture is great and they don't love it.

So from there we then lay them all out and we put them kind of in grids and we make sure that they're all proportional.

Like we don't want one head to be bigger than another.

When you're designing for a class, that you might have some posthumous members, a little bit more difficult to, you know, really honor them and make sure, because they're not here to see the work that you're putting out.

So we go to the first family member in line, whoever's their contact point make sure they're okay with it, they think we're representing them nicely.

But also sometimes we just struggle, you know getting the pictures from them.

I know we have a member this year that he played so long ago, all his pictures were black and white.

He just kind of stuck out in the banner.

So we ended up actually having to, you know colorize and play around with that a little bit.

But the main thing is just how can we honor them even though they're not here.

And we really lean on the family to make sure that they're comfortable with what we're doing.

(upbeat music) Another project that I've been really proud of to work on while I've been here is the Women in Football exhibit.

Our president came in and he really wanted to see more women's football incorporated into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

So I got the opportunity to design a wrap for the displays to really showcase women in football and hopefully to be able to expand that into its own exhibit one day.

We have one main wrapped case, which that's where Jen Welter's jersey is.

She actually came here and got a picture with it and posted about it, so that was super cool to see 'cause she was a really monumental person in women's football.

That's really cool, I got to wrap that one completely.

And then on all of the other ones we have just a smaller football label on it to know that it's part of the exhibit.

As a creative team we are almost always using Adobe products, Adobe Suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign.

Almost every piece of printed material, digital material, that's coming out of the building is created by one of us on the creative team.

So we have a large part in working with everyone in the building to, you know, get the stuff done.

Everything you see around the building has at one point been done by the creative team.

(mello music) We also have one other person on our creative team.

We actually work with him in all of the store photo shoots.

So we do paid social, email marketing, we go down to the store, we get clothes that, you know, we wanna promote.

We might be taking photos one day.

Sometimes we're even, you know, doing some video stuff.

We kind of work hand in hand with our production team too, if they ever need help.

(mellow music) I was actually an intern when I first got to see my work here.

They actually went up at Centennial Plaza first.

That was the first place I've ever seen my work.

It was only Cleveland Brown schedules and Ohio State schedules because they livestream all the games down there.

The big piece I had here, which was obviously the banner, that was just awesome.

Like seeing the Hall of Famers come and be like oh my gosh, that's my face on the wall.

Huge.

Joe Thomas loved it.

You know, DeMarcus Ware, just the smiles on their faces was so rewarding as well as just seeing all of the visitors out front, taking pictures with it, in front of it.

And it's just been really rewarding to see how much everyone enjoys it.

Here at the hall, we obviously take great pride in our work and we're working every day to you know make this a more youthful place and really honor the traditions, but make it a fun place to enjoy.

I've honestly learned so much in the time I've been here from working with the two designers just seeing how they work but also working hand in hand with them.

It's a really great team here.

Everyone's very close, almost like family.

And I do really like the aspect of guests coming in here every day.

You know, you can go out into the museum and leave the office area and you can always hear, you know, the like little commotion of kids or group tours and visits and that just makes me happy because it really shows that the work that we're putting in is worth it.

(mellow music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] After the break, the "Scenic Stops & Stories" crew reveal their favorite stop of the season.

Which one would you choose?

(upbeat music) (keyboard clicking) (lively music) - This whole thing started when I was a little kid and I would watch my dad decorate our house and he would create this amazing wonderland.

We had a 16 foot tall tree and it was incredible, garland and ornaments hanging from all the beams of the ceiling.

And when it was done people would come from everywhere to see it.

Not public people but like friends, relatives, neighbors.

And they would bring people from work.

And our house was always filled with people just experiencing the joy of Christmas through this amazing display my dad would build.

And in those moments of watching all that joy, you know, I got the bug.

And over my lifetime there's been several iterations of the Castle Noel idea and over the years this idea has developed and developed.

(cheerful music) (upbeat music) You are gonna love that "I had that!"

because we have toys from every generation.

It has gone through a massive redo and now there are 10 times the toys, it's enchanted, so lots of toys are doing things now that they weren't doing before.

And it is just an absolute 100% coverage, except for the floor you're walking on, is toys from the '40s through the 2000s in an amazing collage.

I've been to a lot of different like toy museums and the things are very carefully kept and this is how it looked.

But when I was a kid, my closet was a mess, man.

Toys were everywhere.

They were all thrown in there and piled up.

So the "I had that!"

Toyland Experience is more of a like a crazy collage of toys.

You walk through the Hot Wheel mega wheel with over a thousand Hot Wheels rotating around you as you go in and there's just, it's just everywhere.

It's just insanity of toys.

It really is fun to watch people respond to that.

'cause you've never seen anything like it.

It's totally off the walls and it took forever to do.

But I kinda like to do the impossible stuff.

It's like Walt Disney said, "It's always fun to do the impossible."

So we try to do as much impossible here as we can.

(mellow music) We had some relics from old Cleveland window displays and people loved them.

And then people would talk about how their childhood was special because they would go to downtown and they would see these windows whether it was Akron or Cleveland and they loved them.

And so I thought, wow, I gotta go out and try to find whatever I could.

And I looked everywhere and there's pieces of windows from Cleveland's history but there's no like intact windows.

So I thought, where do they make the most amazing animated windows in the world?

That's New York City.

(upbeat music) It is a tradition that the windows are destroyed because they're meant to be a gift to the city and not seen again.

They don't want these to end up in places where they're unintended to be.

And we got them to understand what our mission was here.

And we are excited to say we now have windows from Sak's Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Marshall Fields, all here at Castle Noel.

Incredible collections of windows.

The Cindy Lou Who bedroom set that we have from the movie "The Grinch."

I told my wife one day early, early on I would love to find Cindy Lou Who's bedroom set.

And it wasn't like a day later the phone rings out of the clear blue and it's this woman in Colorado and she says, I have the Cindy Lou Who bedroom set.

Now that alone was amazing, because typically props are parted out.

You'll get a piece of this, a piece of that.

She had somehow gotten in a situation where she had all the props from the bedroom, which was incredible.

(mellow music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Still to come.

Can you choose just one?

The crew of "Scenic Stops & Stories" reveals their favorite story of the season.

(upbeat music) (keyboard clicking) (mouse clicks) (mellow music) - I am from Cork, okay, in Ireland.

And Thomas Hawkes is from Cork.

100 years ago he came over to the United States and made this Hawkes Crystal world-renowned.

(mellow music) And it then, it layed dormant for about 50 or 60 years.

And it came into my hands and I said I have to revive this.

I have to like take this and run with it and I'm doing the best I can to show that man the respect that he deserves.

- Aidan's like one of a kind, he's world-renowned.

He's been commissioned by popes, by several US presidents.

And I just think that people need to kind of honor what he has dedicated his life to in this trade.

- So Aidan is an individual who has had lots, years and years of experience.

And it's not just in the brilliant cutting, it's in the intaglio cutting, it's in faceting, it's in polishing.

- I got an opportunity to come to Tiffin in 2000 by a company called Crystal Traditions, which was owned by two fantastic ladies.

I cut a few pieces for 'em and they said, "Please, please come on up and join us.

You have artistic freedom.

Do whatever you wanna do.

Just do the beautiful stuff that you are doing in Cleveland.

Do it here and, you know, we can go places."

So I did, I came, I left the job in Cleveland and I came here in 2000 and I've been here ever since.

(machine whirring) (machine whirring) - When I think of Aidan's talent and ability I think of it analogous to a top level athlete, like a LeBron James or a Michael Jordan-type person, like a Serena Williams in the tennis world.

He's been challenged to do things that most people in his craft can't do and he's done 'em and he's been successful with them.

- [Aaron] So Aidan apprenticed under a brilliant cutter from Waterford.

And so it's really interesting that he has obtained the same kind of skills that he's now passing down to me.

- I was taught by one of the great master cutters that ever came out of Waterford Crystal.

And he taught me, and as he said, "You need to pass on the gift that's been given to you."

He said, "You need to pass it on."

(mellow music) - I think it's great to keep a lot of these old art forms alive.

'cause once they're gone, they're gone.

You really need to have an appreciation for what it took to get there and then to have that skill to pass it on.

- Hawkes Crystal finds it extremely important to pass the brilliant cutting style down to Aaron because it's a dying art.

There are not many people who do it by hand anymore.

A lot of the stuff is kind of made in a factory or manufactured, whereas they do everything by hand.

It's locally made and it's very, very unique.

So there are not many people that do it.

In fact right now, Aidan is one of, I think two or three people in the United States that's risen to the level of mastery in his craft.

So somebody like that, it's important to hand those skills and talents down to.

- I haven't learned much of the fastening, you know, but that is something that as the years go by certain things pique your interest and Aidan is willing to provide that information and show me those skills when I'm ready.

And that's kind of how we go about the apprenticeship.

- Aidan and Aaron have a great working relationship, just in terms of respect and trust and stuff like that.

They have a great working relationship.

Aaron I think is in his third or fourth year of his apprenticeship and highly regards the work that he's doing, has respect for the work that he's doing.

And alternatively, Aidan really appreciates having an apprentice and having someone to teach the trade to.

- He works hard.

He does what he's told.

He's honest.

And the qualities that I like in a person - I'll regularly ask him, "Hey, does this look nice?"

You know, he'll come in and say, "Hey," you know, "Does this look too big or too small?"

You know?

And then together we figure out and delegate who can kind of make the piece look the best, using their skillset.

- The machines that I work with are anywhere from 60 to 70 to 80 years old.

I love 'em.

I can use a diamond on it and I can use the aluminum oxide wheels which are stone wheels.

Your modern machines today, you can either either use a diamond and then you have to go to a machine that where you can only use stone.

But these machines, I've converted them to diamond and stone.

So I love them.

I love the speed controls.

So it varies from slow to very fast.

From about 200 revs a minute to about 6,000 revs per minute.

Depending on what type of cut you're putting on the glass, will determine how fast you want it to go.

(mellow music) - Brilliant cutting is the cutting of deep geometrical patterns in crystal.

Light wheel engraving is a little bit different.

You're using wheels that have softer angles, that focuses more on pictorial kind of art.

The light wheel engraving, we're gonna be using more wheels and switching them out, on and off.

Whereas brilliant cutting, a lot of times you're gonna stick with that same wheel and have that nice angle all the way through because they're more geometrical designs.

- The brilliant cut is done with a totally different wheel than your normal European cut.

The European cut is done on 120 degree.

The brilliant cut is done on a 70 degree.

70 degree, what it does, it traps light, whereas your 120 degree reflects light.

- The wheels are sort of like your pencil.

You know, an artist has a paintbrush or a pencil and these stone wheels are like our pencils.

Each wheel has a different style of cut, a different shape and sometimes even a slightly different color to it.

- And when you get a wheel, you know, you hang onto that wheel until there's nothing left because it's a beautiful wheel and it cuts the glass perfect the way you want it.

- So here at Hawke's Crystal we polish by hand, and the difference between that is you get a lot better of a shine to your crystal, especially when it comes to the brilliant cut styles.

You have deeper cuts and we are able to meticulously go over each of those cuts by hand.

Whereas an acid system sometimes washes out those cuts and makes them not quite as sharp as they could be.

(mellow music) - While I don't make any of this stuff here at Hawke's Crystal, I'm very proud to be a part of the work that they do.

This is a hidden gem that people can take advantage of.

- We're one of very few that that still cuts the way we do here.

People really enjoy seeing the artwork come to life.

- And that's the beauty of our store because you can go down and you can see all different types of styles of cutting and shapes and it is just amazing the stuff that we create, me and Aaron.

(mellow music) (upbeat music)