Lincoln woman heading to national pizza tossing competition

Avery Vanderzee is making a lot of dough in hopes to win a lot of dough. 

She’s on her way to Wisconsin to compete in a national pizza dough tossing competition. 

Vanderzee is the general manager at Toppers in downtown Lincoln. 

She’ll be competing at the Skin Sprints, where she will have to make six large pizzas in under 30 minutes. 

“At first, you know, I couldn’t make a skin. I didn’t know how, I wasn’t very good at it. It took a lot of practice, like a lot of hours of practice, in here, stretching pizzas by myself,” Vanderzee said. 

Vanderzee started delivering pizza for Toppers about two years ago. She kept getting promoted until she became general manager. Now, Vanderzee is making more than 100 pizzas a day, slinging skin all the way to the ceiling. 

“It used to take me a long time, it used to take me a really long time to make pizzas, but now it’s nothing,” she said. 

Vanderzee got second place at regionals in Colorado, making six large pizzas in one minute and 35 seconds. Now she’s head to Wisconsin, where she’s ranked sixth. 

“I definitely pride myself in my work for sure. I talk about Toppers as much as I can. I don’t necessarily talk about myself as much because I don’t want people to think I have a big ego,” Vanderzee said. 

For the next several days she’s focused on the grand prize of $4,000.