Blueprint NAU

Pine Cathedral, Now With Paperwork 😑

adjusts visor Six apprentices climbed to 7,000 feet under warm, dry skies (67–82.5°F, gusts to 13.3 mph) for Week 2 of Benches for Butts, and I'm told the drama this week isn't about hauling logs anymore — it's about who controls the pencil. Louie unrolled the campus blueprints this episode, eight increasingly ambitious bench designs, and the story shifted from a simple downhill haul into a full drafting-table turf war, complete with whispers of overnight design espionage between crews. A genuine chapter turn, and I say that with real reluctance, because chapter turns mean I have to care about the plot again. 📐

Front Nine Draft, Back Nine Rewrite 🌲

In her league debut, Sophie Belchak grabbed the lead after hole 3, but Nikolai Kitaguchi had other plans once his early cold streak (holes 1–6) finally broke. Nikolai's front nine ran six strokes better than his back the previous week's pattern flipped entirely this time — a six-stroke-better front nine turned into an even hotter six-stroke back-nine charge that retook the lead for good after hole 13, closing at +14 for the round of the day at a 677 rating. Sophie's card took a bruise on the Super Ace hole 12 (+1, no jackpot), then endured a rough stretch from hole 4 through 18, yet still walked away with a 551-rated round — a staggering 68 points above her rating for a debut showing at +24. Nikolai's win also extends his Master Craftsman lead after a wire-to-wire Week 1 victory; two weeks in, he's not just drafting the blueprint, he's stamping it. 🖋️

Two Eagles and a Clean Audit 🦅

Joshua Moore took the lead after hole 6 and simply never gave it back, stacking solo birdies on holes 3, 5, 8, and 10 — including a Circle 2 putt on 10 — before eagling both hole 15's 551-foot par 5 and hole 16's 332-foot par 4 to finish -11 at a personal-best, 991-rated round, 24 points above his own rating. Debutant Liam Dalton answered with his own hole-15 eagle and a clean, bogey-free back nine, riding a holes-11-through-13 stretch to a statement -7 finish at 941-rated — not a bad way to introduce yourself to the timber yard. Joshua's surge carries real weight beyond the scorecard too: it's a sharp reversal from his Week 1 fourth-place finish, and it just rewrote his tag standing entirely. 🏗️

Led Through 18, Filed Under 4th 🪚

Zach Pasteris held the RAH lead through all 18 holes and still slid to 4th place overall, closing at -2 for an 878-rated round — 48 points below his rating and a steep comedown from Week 1's -11, 952-rated heater. A lone bright spot arrived early with a solo birdie on hole 4, and a holes-14-through-16 hot streak flared before fizzling, while hole 12's Super Ace toll struck again with a +1. The swing on paper is dramatic: a +26-above-rating week has flipped into a -74 rating drop, and that's the kind of regression worth watching as his season-long duel storyline keeps writing itself. 📉

Same Score, New Blueprint Tier 🔨

Stacey Briscoe posted a bogey-free front nine, rode a par train through holes 7 to 11, cooled briefly across holes 14 to 17, and closed at -5 for a 915-rated round and the RAD division win. Identical score to Week 1, wildly different result — an 8th-to-3rd jump powered by a +46 rating swing, proof that consistency at NAU's altitude can still mean climbing the ladder if the rest of the field stumbles. Quietly, and without a single eagle to her name this week, Stacey's turning into the apprentice nobody wants to underestimate. 🪵

Three Eagles Walked Into a Forest 🦅🦅🦅

The day's headline stat: three total eagles logged, Joshua Moore twice on holes 15 and 16, Liam Dalton once on hole 15, while the field's collective average sat around +2.2 — a gap that shows just how far above the pack the RPA leaders were flying. Hole 12's Super Ace reputation held firm all day, extracting its toll from Sophie Belchak, Joshua Moore, and Zach Pasteris alike, while rating swings ran wild on both ends — Sophie's +68-over-rating debut and Zach's -48 stumble bookending the extremes of the afternoon. Precision wins at 7,000 feet. Power just gets a longer walk to the drop zone. 🌲

The Super Ace Pot Just Keeps Filing Interest 💰

No one solved hole 12's Super Ace this week — Sophie, Joshua, and Zach all took their shot and missed the mark — but three players' $6.00 contributions pushed the split pot from $358 to $364. The suspense compounds right alongside the field's putting nerves, and somewhere out there is an apprentice who's going to thread that needle and never let anyone forget it. ⛓️

Benches Are 7% Assembled 🪑

This week's registration contributions added $6.00 to the Benches for Butts: A Bench on Every Hole fund, bringing the campaign to $66.00 raised of the $1,000.00 goal — 7% complete, with $934.00 still needed. The league's flat per-player contribution keeps the sawdust turning into actual furniture, one round at a time; check progress or pitch in directly via the project fund page. 🧾

Still Standing, Freshly Stamped 🏷️

In the Sawdust Syndicate pool, Nikolai Kitaguchi successfully defended the #1 tag — Column Ruled — for the first time, backing it up with the outright round of the day. In the Blueprint Bureau pool, the full AllIn reshuffle sent Joshua Moore surging from tag #4 to #1, seizing the Stamp Saboteur with his personal-best, 991-rated round. Born from committee frustration and rejection stamps, this tag rewards exactly the kind of clean, mistake-free filing Joshua just produced — a three-position climb that clears his form for now. Whether he can hold the title is a fair question, given AllIn mode redistributes every tag on the board each week; nobody's safe, least of all the guy who just got comfortable. 📋

Sawdust Storm

Joshua Moore's mistake-free run — eagles, a personal best, a freshly seized Stamp Saboteur tag — sets a brutal bar just as the season pivots from drafting blueprints to actually cutting boards. Next week's Sawdust Storm turns the workshop into what Louie's calling a "particle-board snow globe," rewarding precision cutters and exposing anyone whose measurements run six inches short — a fitting gauntlet for a division as freshly reshuffled as this one. Registration is open via the event page.

sighs Nothing says "structural integrity" like handing apprentices power tools and calling the resulting particleboard blizzard a competitive event.