Cornhole Champs’ Crown Challenged

After tossing his fourth beanbag wide of the hole, Thomas Griffin, a lanky redhead wearing sneakers with purple laces, shook his head and lit up another cigarette. Maybe that would get him back in form.

Griffin and his teammate, Pete Lombardozzi, were trailing 15 to 8 in the semi-final of the fourth annual ​“Game On9” cornhole tournament, hosted by the Town Green Special Services District in New Haven’s historic Ninth Square neighborhood.

Griffin and Lombardozzi, who are both in their late 20s and have been friends since their childhood in West Haven, entered the tournament as reigning champions. And their elegant throwing technique soon earned the respect and adulation of the dozens of cornhole contestants assembled on Orange Street last Friday evening for this month’s Ninth Square communal TGIF bash.

“The guy in the purple laces — he’s really good,” a passing biker remarked.

But ten minutes into the semifinal, the pair were on the verge of losing a match they had fully expected to win. Griffin, a former Air Force weapons loader who recently started work hammering railroad stakes for Amtrak, found himself unable to produce the smooth, balletic tossing motion that had served him well in the previous rounds. Lombardozzi, who works as an engineer at Medtronic and recently moved back to West Haven, wasn’t faring much better. 

The game of cornhole appears simple: Teams of two toss beanbags toward a circular hole in an elevated wooden board stationed nine yards away.

But the scoring system, which can baffle the uninitiated, fosters a surprising degree of tactical sophistication. Every match is broken into innings in which the two teams throw four beanbags each, recording one point for bags that land on the board and three for bags that fall through the hole. At the end of an inning, the points cancel out — the pair with the higher total earns only the difference between the other team’s haul and their own. The first team to accumulate 21 points wins the game. Terrence McIntosh, a ​“Downtown ambassador” for the Town Green Special Services District and the tournament’s de facto referee, spent much of the early rounds briefing contestants on the nuances of ​“cancellation scoring.”

It would be an understatement to say that Griffin and Lombardozzi take cornhole more seriously than do most people who sign up for Game On9 tournaments. Lombardozzi calls each set of boards and beanbags a cornhole ​“arena,” because he believes only that term gives the game the exalted status it deserves. And Griffin remained laser-focused even as he easily dispatched unpracticed rivals in the early rounds.

The pair met at Savin Rock Community School in West Haven, where they soon developed a competitive rapport, organizing regular dodge ball tournaments. ​“Our whole friendship is based upon beating each other in stuff,” Lombardozzi said. In their junior year of high school, they invited dozens of students to a mud-wrestling tournament held in Lombardozzi’s backyard, and distributed t‑shirts bearing the deliberately provocative slogan ​“We Like it Dirty.”

In recent years, Griffin and Lombardozzi have focused their competitive energy on cornhole, a game they picked up in the summer of 2006, when Lombardozzi returned to West Haven after his first year as an engineering student at Boston University. They built their own cornhole boards from scratch, using stencils to decorate the makeshift equipment with their favorite Nintendo characters. And, of course, they practiced.

“We tried to hit up as many cookouts as we could,” Lombardozzi said. ​“The average aunt and uncle team really can’t beat us, so we step off to be fair.”

To prepare for last year’s tournament, Griffin and Lombardozzi played 50 matches a day for two months leading up to the event. They won easily, Lombardozzi said, despite falling behind in the early innings of the final. But Griffin remains irked that the organizers passed him over for most valuable player.

“He kind of wants those personal accolades,” said Lombardozzi, straining to be heard over blaring street music and the rhythmic thud of beanbags crashing against boards. ​“I just want the championship rings. I want so many [medals] on my neck that I can’t stand up straight.”

But the opening innings of Friday’s semi-final offered a stern test. Lombardozzi — planting his left foot forward, lifting his back leg an inch into the air — tossed two bags that nestled close to the edge of the hole but refused to slide down. Griffin, who glanced around nervously as other contestants gathered to see the drama unfold, grimaced in his teammate’s direction, then lit himself a cigarette. 

The sight of Griffin with beanbag in hand, a cigarette dangling from his teeth, has become a hallmark of the annual tournament. “[Last year] I think I was just in the zone when I was smoking,” he said. ​“So if we were on a bad run, I would just light one up.”

Griffin and Lombardozi soon pulled to within one point of a tie. It was Griffin’s turn to throw. He launched two bags that landed inches shy of the hole, defensive shots designed to block the target, forcing the opponents to toss more conservatively. As the sun started to go down, he arced his final throw toward the board: the bag spun through the air, then slid across the board’s surface, knocking home the two previous shots as it wormed into the hole.

Lombardozzi punched the air in celebration — a disaster had been narrowly averted.

“Griff had an off game,” Lombardozzi said. ​“But that’s why we keep him around – for clutch shots like that.”

A few minutes later, Lombardozzi and Griffin won the final in a shutout.

It was getting dark. McIntosh ushered the winners over for a hastily arranged trophy presentation. Lombardozzi’s sister and father — who had traveled together from West Haven to watch the tournament — gathered for photographs.

Griffin, trophy aloft, cameras still flashing, said he intended to start practicing again the very next day. Lombardozzi turned, gesturing in the direction of the streetlamps.

“Hey, if we get the lights on, we can play now,” he said.