Helping Santa Clarita Heal Through Cornhole

When Nick and I founded Scoreholio, one of our biggest goals was to help the community. Among the many things I’m proud of, and they are many, it’s that we’ve achieved that goal.

Supporting Santa Clarita in the Wake of the Saugus High Shooting

Last week my home town of Santa Clarita experienced a school shooting that took two young lives, seriously injured three more, and deeply affected every one of us who live here and love this town. I now know first-hand the trauma of needing to get your family together, safe, while begrudgingly respecting the need to lock schools down, shelter in place and let law enforcement do their job, and I wouldn’t wish that experience and helpless feeling on anybody.

I also, through cornhole, now know the gratifying feeling of helping the community you love come together to heal and support the victims of something like this. I had been scheduled to run a fundraiser for the Saugus High School (where the shooting took place) baseball team yesterday, at Wolf Creek Brewery. When the shooting occured I talked to the organizers about possibly cancelling because of the shooting, and they brought a tear to my eye by telling me they wanted to keep it on the books, but have the funds raised go to the victims of the shooting. I loved the idea, and promoted the change. What happened next blew me away…

I was flooded with emails and phone calls from people who wanted to not only participate, but donate products and services for prizes, and a raffle, and just to help out. I’ll admit I got nervous about how big it was getting, but elated and up for the challenge. With the help of Chris Pleugs and Amy Lee who run SCV Cornhole, we charged ahead and made it HAPPEN and raised almost $8,000 that’s going directly to the victims. I’d also like to thank Laina Mcferren and the amazing staff of our host Wolf Creek, Tyler Lasdon and family for DJ services, Sweet Beams ice cream and Monica’s Taco’s who reached out to come and donate proceeds, and United Services for bringing the porta-potties we needed to accomodate the crowd.

Inventing Another New Format

Last year when we invented the Switcholio tournament format that gives everybody a new partner for each game of a round robin, our goal was to make the game more welcoming to new players by fostering more fair competition among players of all skill levels.

This tournament was scheduled for noon, and needed to be done by 5:00 so people could get to a vigil for victims that evening. Interest was off the chart, and we had to limit participation to 100 teams of two people. Even on 16 courts it was going to be tight, and that inspired another new format: Round Robin Knockout.  It’s a a 4-game round robin, but you’re “out” with your second loss. Simply had to do that to speed things up, but it worked really well. Those there to support the event got to play two games, serious players got to play increasingly difficult games and after the round robin I seeded everybody who hadn’t lost two, i.e. 4-0 and 3-1 into a seeded single elimination playoff bracket. We have added support for Round Robin Knockout to the app.

Everybody had a great time, we saw some GREAT cornhole down the stretch and I couldn’t be more proud of how it went.