MISQUAH — The Loon Ridge men’s league holds its season banquet Thursday at the Northern Tap, 6:30, meat raffle at eight, and the only item anybody has asked this newspaper about is the one that is not on the agenda.

The background, for anyone who spent July indoors: during the smoke week in late July the league played a night on the front nine only, because the back nine was not visible, and posted the best scoring average of the summer. Head pro Greg Mattson ruled the scores count toward the season points race, asterisked in pencil, with the asterisk itself to be reviewed at the banquet.

Mattson has said since July that he considers the matter settled and reviewable, which are two words that do not ordinarily sit together, and that he intends to let the room have it out.

The room will. By the count of three people who have been to more of these than they would like to admit, the asterisk comes up between 7:30 and 7:50, after the season awards and before the raffle, raised by somebody whose points total was affected and seconded by somebody whose was not and who simply enjoys it.

Nothing that happens Thursday will appear in this newspaper until next week, which several league members have pointed out gives them six full days to establish a version of events. This newspaper will be there and will print what the room does.

The season points race itself finished with Mattson’s own name nowhere near the top, which he mentions preemptively every year and which is true. The winner will be announced Thursday and is, per three people who can add, a man who did not play the smoke-week round at all, which is either the cleanest possible outcome or the most annoying one depending on who is doing the talking.

The banquet also hands out the traveling trophy, a plated putter mounted on a board, which has been won by eleven different men since 1994 and has been in the same basement since 2021 because the winner that year moved to Brainerd and nobody has asked for it back.