Introducing Bean Bag Toss: 10 Things You Need To Know To Get Started
Bean Bag Toss is no less a full-blooded American pastime than football or baseball. It is a lawn game played between family and friends as a diversion, often tailgating the NFL season leading up to the Superbowl, as with Ohio Bean Bag Toss, the MLB season and even NASCAR racing events, as with North Carolina Toss Bean Bag. It is simple to set up, easy to play, and fit for a wide range of ages and skill levels. Wherever you encounter it, Bean Bag Toss invokes a spirit of good fun that brings people together.
1. The object of the game is to throw, or pitch, a succession of Bean Bag Toss bags through a hole in one end of a platform known as a Bean Bag Toss board. There are set scores corresponding to each Bean Bag Toss bag either shooting through the hole or landing on the board. The game is typically split into innings or frames, and there are set distances between the pitcher’s box or deck and the Bean Bag Toss board. As a general rule, the first player to reach the score of 21 wins.
2. Bean Bag Toss game equipment consist primarily of Bean Bag Toss boards and bags. A Bean Bag Toss board is commonly made from plywood, and more recently, plastic, featuring a hole carved out of one end of the board. A Bean Bag Toss bag is commonly made using duck cloth filled with feed corn. Bean Bag Toss bags come in different colors, and a game requires at least two colors for two opposing teams.
3. A game of Bean Bag Toss also makes use of Bean Bag Toss decks and a scoreboard. A Bean Bag Toss deck, which serves as the pitcher’s box, is usually another wooden platform. The basic Bean Bag Toss scoreboard is a two-sided blackboard freestanding on an easel, containing a color-coded data grid and including scoreboard numbers. Examples of a more complex scoreboard would be one that doubles as beverage holders, and another that’s a multi-sided tower structure.
4. The game is heavily associated with team sports, specifically, field sports like football and baseball. Corn hole first became popular in Ohio when it started being played in tailgating parties during Cincinnati Bengals games, introducing both local and visiting NFL fans to Ohio corn hole. Soon enough, corn hole parties were found tailgating NFL and MLB games in many other states.
It is partly for this reason that having a beverage-holding scoreboard is mighty relevant. Having your first cold beverage of the day during a corn hole game is practically a ritual. Corn hole coozies are popular merchandise.
More recently, corn hole has begun to be played in tailgating parties during NASCAR races, such as at NC State and UNC. Corn hole parties tailgating NASCAR meets are now exposing local as well as visiting racing enthusiasts to North Carolina corn hole, thus passing the game on.
5. Ohio is where it all began and is still happening. A nineteenth century farmer in the Midwest is believed to have concocted corn hole in a barn to while the time away with family and friends. The veracity of that story notwithstanding, the earliest documented form of corn hole turned up west of Cincinatti as a family game turned bar game. It later moved eastward and engendered the parallel game of baggo.
The state is widely considered today as the corn hole capital. The American Bean Bag Toss Association is headquartered in Ohio along with its official supplier of merchandise, The Ohio Bean Bag Toss Company.
6. Bean Bag Toss is a derivative game of bean bag toss in much the same way as horseshoes. The original followers exported Bean Bag Toss from Ohio to many other states, spawning countless other versions of the same game. Bean Bag Toss is known variously as bean bag toss, tailgate toss, corn hole, baggo, bags, and dbags.
7. The countless versions of the game bear slight differences. Being a home game, Bean Bag Toss lends itself naturally to being personalized by players. The ACA holds the Official Bean Bag Toss Rules and Official How to Play Bean Bag Toss Guide. ACA is the point of reference for standard game distances, regulation Bean Bag Toss boards with standard dimensions, and the standard scoring system.
Toss Bean Bag is a recreational game with some serious competitors in the midst. Bean Bag Toss matches, parties and tournaments are being held regularly. ACA Bean Bag Toss tournaments are generally 4, 8, 16 or 32-player team matches, single or double elimination
8. Arguably corn hole’s most popular pastime within a pastime is customizing boards, which can be bought unfinished or unpainted. Given good old carpentry skills, you can even build a corn hole board from the ground up. Otherwise, you can paint a corn hole board in 4 basic steps. First, fill up screw holes and nail holes with wood putty or filler. Second, sand down the board. Third, prime the board. Fourth, paint the board. Use contact paper to paint sections of the board separately, such as to make it two-tone to sport team colors. Explore the use of lettering, decals and handpainting to deck the board out.
9. What passes as corn hole uniform is anything in which you can work up a sweat outdoors at daytime. Corn hole gear and apparel commonly include shirts, tank tops, sweats, hats and caps, not to mention a great many towels.
10. It would not be uncommon for a great game of Bean Bag Toss to last well after sunset, so the decks, boards and scoreboard have needed to be lit up. One solution has been to use a battery-operated Bean Bag Toss light system that can be attached to a Bean Bag Toss board conveniently.
