Las Vegas League 4 Champion Profile - Clark Olson

[Tom Kessenich]

Going down to the wire makes for a thrilling fantasy season - and a very rewarding fantasy championship. That’s precisely what happened to Clark Olson in Las Vegas 4 this season.



That league featured one of the tightest races in the NFBC for much of the season but when the smoke cleared, Olson’s team had emerged victorious, claiming the $5,000 first-place prize.



The title was Olson’s second straight league championship in the NFBC.



"It felt great to win the league," said Olson, a professor at the University of Washington Bothell. "Las Vegas 4 was a close league until the last week when I pulled away. I was only confident of a victory for the last couple of days of the season."



The first-place finish was especially rewarding for Olson given how far he had to climb up in the standings in the second half of the season. At the All-Star break, things didn’t look all that promising for his team as it was perched in ninth place, 51 points out of first.



But then came the second half of the season.



"My second half was incredible," he said.



Indeed it was.



"I had very good balance on my team, not finishing below seventh in any of the categories," said Olson, who has been playing fantasy sports since 1991. "It was also important that I was able to make up ground with free agents in the second half of the season. I needed improvements in all of the categories, except for saves."



One of the FAAB moves that Olson made which turned out to be gold was grabbing Milwaukee reliever Derrick Turnbow before he became the Brewers’ closer. Working the Waiver Wire proved fruitful because Olson admitted he wasn’t entirely pleased with how his draft went.



"There was no strategy that went wrong, but in retrospect there were players I shouldn’t have drafted and players that I dropped that I shouldn’t have," he said. "I became disenchanted with almost all of my picks after Round 17, including Aaron Miles (18th round), Jose Cruz (19th), Todd Walker (20th), Vicente Padilla (21st) and Joe Crede (22nd) and even Jhonny Peralta (24th), who I gave up on way too early."



A two-time league winner in the NFBC, Olson has high praise for the industry’s only high-stakes baseball event.



"I am very happy with everything about it," he said. "The league was well run and problems were rare and fixed quickly."