As a younger man, I had a decent athletic career. I was a pretty good wrestler in high school and managed to compete all four years in college with a record near .500. Since then, I haven’t done so much. Sure, I had some success coaching in Maryland, but left that all behind six years ago.
The tables turned a few weeks ago on vacation. I returned to my championship form.
Not in wrestling though. This time, I conquered cornhole.
If you recall, my family discovered the beanbag toss game called cornhole last summer. The event perfectly fit our lazy, beer-drinking ways, especially during our beach vacation.
In the first two family events where I competed, I came up empty. But the winds were just right and the beers just cold enough at the beach as I came home with the Bethany Beanbag Classic (BBC) title along with my partner John, who is married to one of my nieces.
This may seem trivial to some people, but we took down the dynasty of my nephew Pat and niece Kerry, last year’s BBC winners. Pat had been on the winning team in all three family competitions, so this was monumental.
Of course, any good championship needs a little controversy. There were two sets of beanbags used during the tournament. The lighter set favored our opponents. We dominated with the heavier set.
After we split the first two games of the best-of-three finals, we had to decide what bags to use for the rubber match. I desperately wanted to use the heavier bags, even though they had Yankee logos all over them. The sacrifices athletes make to cover themselves in glory.
Anyways, we ended up flipping a coin, and the finals proceeded with the heavy bags. Game, set, match. We won the title belts. And there were real title belts, one of which now resides in my basement.
I really feel like some sort of divine intervention took place for John and I to win the title. After all, I was almost killed earlier in the day.
While riding go-karts that morning, one of my goddaughters lost control of her car, crashed into me and drove my car up on top of the barrier in the middle of the race track.
The guys working the track came over to help me, but ended up scratching their heads and admitting that no one had ever ended up in that position before. I was honored.
They had to remove the plastic shell of the car and move the go-kart back onto the track to let me continue the race. Even with that brush with mortality, I had to finish the race.
After all, that’s what beach week is all about – going beyond the normal to achieve the extraordinary. If I had walked away from the race, I might not have been able to muster the courage to take part in the annual family bumper car extravaganza.
And if you can’t bring yourself to drive small a bumper car into your brothers and sisters, you don’t deserve to wear the cornhole championship belt.