&dquo;It feels like your heart&squo;s going a thousand miles an hour,&dquo; said Shane Olive, a competition rookie from Ft. Lawn, S.C. &dquo;Trying to get that meat on the plate at crunch time ‐ it&squo;s a lot more stressful than I thought it would be.&dquo; For the past 11 years, Olive has hosted a barbeque for around 70 friends at his home and decided that this year, he would &dquo;go up against the big guys.&dquo;

&dquo;As long as we&squo;re not 79th, I&squo;ll be happy.&dquo; His team, &dquo;Motley Q,&dquo; finished 74th.

Olive got some help from veteran Drew &dquo;Blindog&dquo; Grega from Huntsville, Ala., who was set up under the same walnut tree.

&dquo;Take that charcoal lighter fluid and throw it in the river,&dquo; Grega advised. Blindog, who grew up in Spartanburg, finished 18th overall and has competed in the BRBF for the past 14 years. Grega is the founder of the Rocket City BBQ Festival in Huntsville, which fielded 66 teams this year, and says he developed that contest based on what he learned here in Tryon.

&dquo;In a normal year, we travel to 10 or 12 competitions. The economy&squo;s kind of gone south, so we&squo;ve cut back to five or six&ellip; Every contest I&squo;ve been to this year is about 25 percent off in terms of participants. But we always come here. People come here because these guys know how to run it.&dquo;

Approximately 80 teams took part in the 2008 BRBF, so there hasn&squo;t been much, if any, drop-off for Tryon.

A few years back the Food Network featured some of Grega&squo;s recipes, and rewarded him with a custom cooker and trailer. &dquo;It was too big for my truck to pull,&dquo; he laughed. His new rig still cooks up to 40 chickens at one time. But he&squo;s quick to point out that it&squo;s quality, not quantity, that counts.

&dquo;It&squo;s all about pleasing the judges&ellip; Shane&squo;s convinced he&squo;s gonna put mesquite flavor on his brisket. There&squo;s not a mesquite tree east of Louisiana.&dquo;

The judges do have fine-tuned tastebuds. Tony Stone from Cooksville, Tenn., contest representative and former president of the Kansas City Barbeque Society, oversaw the judging process on Saturday afternoon. Stone is one of 11 certified BBQ judge instructors in the country and has been involved with BBQ contests since 1988.

When he sits down to a plate of barbeque, or anything else, he says his judging instincts kick in involuntarily: &dquo;I&squo;m at the point now that anytime I eat out, I&squo;m judging. What&squo;s the flavor, what&squo;s the taste, where&squo;d they get that, was that piece of meat was done properly?&dquo;

That level of detail goes into each bite the judges take. There are six judges to a table, and a table captain presents each entry to the judges. Scores are given on appearance, taste and texture.

Al Werts, a certified master judge from Leesville, S.C., described the scoring procedure.

&dquo;You have a scorecard that goes from 2-9, with 9 being the highest. I probably give out more 9s on appearance than anything.&dquo;

Werts was a table captain at this year&squo;s event and said his favorite category is probably the &dquo;Anything But,&dquo; in which cooking teams offer dishes prepared outside the traditional barbeque fare.

&dquo;I&squo;ve had everything from alligator to zebra, shark, elk, deer, you name it,&dquo; he said.

The 2009 &dquo;Anything But&dquo; winning dish was lobster tails with bacon-wrapped shrimp, prepared by the Texas Young Guns from Pasadena, Texas.

The overall winners, Chatham Artillery BBQ of Savannah, Ga., took home the Grand Champion trophy by finishing in the top 11 in each of the four scored categories: chicken, (fifth); pork ribs, (first); pork, (11th); and brisket (seventh). The team also won earlier this year in Albany, Ga., and has been in the top five in four of the five events they&squo;ve entered in 2009.

Team captain Bill Anderson and his cooking partner Lee Sweat hit the circuit three years ago, but had a tough go at first. They started doing some research, and ended up putting what they found into a book called &dquo;Competition BBQ Secrets.&dquo; They estimate the total cost to participate in a contest at around $1,000, and with only the top places paying, most times teams are lucky to break even.

The competition is about more than money, though. Besides those two and half hours on Saturday afternoon, the groups are quite friendly, joking around and doing what most people do at a barbeque. After all, it does take a long time to cook barbeque properly. Which is a big reason BRBF founder Jim Tabb loves it so much.

&dquo;Barbeque is not fast, there&squo;s nothing fast about it, except maybe burning yourself or running out of beer,&dquo; Tabb said. &dquo;Barbeque&squo;s not gonna change, it&squo;s gonna be the same. If it changes it won&squo;t be called barbeque, it&squo;ll be something else, and it&squo;ll be awful&ellip; If you do it right, you can&squo;t screw it up. It&squo;s slow. You lie in your hammock and you watch a temp gauge. It&squo;s great therapy.&dquo;

&bsp;