The smell of salt water, sand in our hair, and the sun beating down on our skin. They were the dog days of summer. My good friend Raj and I were sitting on the beach talking about the upcoming senior year. We were discussing our various AP courses and different sports we were looking forward to. We eventually got on the topic of clubs and how we didn’t really belong to many. Just as we began discussing that, a bean bag flew over our head and landed on the sand in front of us. At the moment we got an idea: The Cornhole Club.

Now neither of us were particularly good at Cornhole, but it wasn’t necessarily about that. We wanted to create a club that was easy for anyone to join or pick up. So after much deliberation throughout the rest of the summer, we finally decided to go through with it and plan out our meeting schedule. We nabbed Mrs. Stueber as our advisor, and we were in the homestretch with only the proposal to administration to finally close the deal. I was pretty nervous about presenting my idea in front of administration as I believed it would be turned down for being unscholarly or childish. However, Mr. Varlamos, who took the meeting, gave it the greenlight almost right away. He even went as far as to say “Maybe I’ll come down and throw a bag or two.” The easy part was over; now it was time to generate interest in the club.

When pitching our idea to graduated seniors, Raj and I were met with resounding support. Responses ranged from “I would join that if I still went to high school,” or “How did I not think of that?” So morale was pretty high when we began pitching it to kids in our school. We hung up almost a million flyers, posted it all over social media, and wrote it on almost every chalkboard in the school. Even with all the effort put into promoting the club, I still had questions about how successful it would be. The questions would quickly be answered when nearly 60 kids showed up to the first meeting. And then an additional 40 kids to the next. At the end of the introductory meetings we had around 115 kids in total sign up. That puts the Cornhole Club right behind the Honor Societies in total participation (don’t look that up!). Kids are enjoying themselves, including Nik Cerrito who described his time at one of the meetings as “Transcendent and inspirational.”

The immense support received for a club, that was pretty much an afterthought for me, has been overwhelming. I’m glad I was able to provide a club not for any specific niche but for anybody to have fun and meet some new people.