Athletes welcome new challenge
Several veteran wheelchair athletes rolled up to take on a new sport on the first full day of competition at the 42nd National Veterans Wheelchair Games (NVWG) in Portland, Ore.
Cornhole, a popular lawn game that involves tossing bean bags into a 6-inch-diameter hole cut into an angled board, made its debut as an exhibition sport Wednesday inside the Portland Convention Center.
Veterans were randomly paired, and each was given four fabric bean bags in a single color (red or gray). Players took turns tossing a bag toward the hole in the board. Each bag that landed on the board counted as one point, and each bag that went in the hole counted as three points. The player scoring the most points deducted the number of points of the other player’s score for that round, and the play continued until one player reached exactly 21 points. If a player went over 21, the person’s score was set back to 13, and play continued.
The game has grown so popular that is has spawned a professional American Cornhole League and associated world championships. Volunteer Andi Lathrop says the pros score a little differently from how the NVWG competition was scored.
“Instead of every point counting, if there’s a red and gray on the board, they cancel each other out. So, here we’re counting every point,” she says.
In addition, she says for the NVWG, adaptations were made for different ability levels by changing the distance of the player’s distance from the board, anywhere between 12 and 24 feet.
Vonzell Brown, an Army veteran and Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) Gateway Chapter member, took advantage of the opportunity to try out the game, having only played once before at his younger brother Ronald’s house.
The 65-year-old, who lives in Madison, Ill., served from 1979 to 1985 and sustained a level L4 spinal-cord injury from a gunshot in 1985. He attended his first NVWG in 1988 in San Antonio and has attended about 27 Games overall.
He wanted to come this year to “relieve a lot of stress.” This is his first NVWG since having heart surgery in 2019.
“I’m used to track and field, doing 5K races, doing basketball, doing baseball or anything else … I do the hard stuff. But now after my heart surgery, they don’t want me doing no strenuous, nothing,” he says.
Despite his inexperience, he beat his opponent, Patrick Ozborn, with whom he exchanged jokes and trash talk throughout the matchup. He credited the win to luck, not skill or strategy.
“I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun,” Brown says. “I’m here to have fun. They just said throw the bag in the hole. But I think I got it now.”
