7th Annual Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics

We held our 7th Annual Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics at our home this past weekend.  We were lucky to have beautiful weather and a great turn out of participants, refs, and observers.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again and again - we could not do this event without the generosity, good nature, and kindness of the people that participate.  Beer Olympics is like a holiday around here.

We spend a few weeks prior to the day planning, organizing, taking inventory, and preparing.  There are shirts to be ordered, waivers and rules to be updated and printed, rsvps to collect, and a winner plaque to be engraved and added to our Champion trophy stand.

This year because we had several long time veteran players unable to participate (we missed you!), we tried out a new strategy and had Every Man for Himself scoring and play for the day.  We were still able to play the same team events, but we switched up the teams before every event and scored by individual player versus by team.  

As in years past, we limited our participants to 32 people so that we have no more than 8 teams of four. As part of Beer Olympics prep, I created thirty-two slips of paper with a team color listed on it (four papers per each color) and put them in a container. Before each game, participants pulled their new team color, applied appropriate face paint, and met their new teammates.

Our first event is always a Beer Pong tournament played with House rules.  After the first round of standard play (20 cup per each side of the table), we finish out the tournament by winners and losers brackets in two rounds of Hungry Hungry HipPong.   Points were given to each person based on their teams' overall performance.  (ie. each person on Red team personally earned first place points as overall winners for the event).

Personal scores were added to the scoreboard and players received new team assignments and re-painted their faces as necessary.

Our second event is our Dingbat Relay (similar to Dizzy Bat) and is generally hilarious and pure mayhem.  All refs eyes were on the game, so we don't have any camera footage of the event, however there is some incredible GoPro footage. My Mom, acting as a ref, who was seated in the chair that players had to round had an unfortunate run in with two of the participants as they tried to push past each other at the turn around.  All three of them and the chair and the GoPro went crashing to the ground in a hilarious heap of cursing and laughing. The GoPro footage is amazing.  Thanks Momma for taking one for the day!

We followed Dingbat Relay with a challenge opportunity:  Keg Stands.  Challenges are optional and are geared toward participants who are seeking opportunities to earn a couple extra points.  Keg Stands were worth four points, limited to only one, and set to a certain time limit (10 seconds for males, 7 for females) and position (upside down and right side up)

Teams were changed up again, and then it was on to Ice Cube Tray Canoe Races.  The views on this game are widely diverse across the players, some love it, some just accept it, other's despise it.  We play this game as only winners move on to the next round (One Loss and Done), and the first round is a full tray, subsequent rounds are only a half tray.

Personal scores calculated again and it was on to Slippy Cup.  We added vegetable oil this year to the Slip 'n Slide (an old pool cover) and it was hugely successful for speed and hilarity.  Slippy Cup is completed in four heats (eight participants at a time).  Player's chug, flip, run, slide, run, chug, flip, sit as fast as they can.  Slippy Cup is a player favorite. 

Our last event before the intermission is always Anchorman because, well quite honestly, everyone needs a break after Anchorman.  Each team is given a pitcher of 2 Liters of Beer and at the whistle each team begins drinking.  Once the pitcher is passed to the next player, it cannot be passed back.  The final player (the Anchorman) has to finish whatever is left in the pitcher.  The key here is not speed, but rather distribution of beer among the whole team.  Regardless of how much players 'think' they drank from the pitcher - it seems the Anchorman is always left with a daunting amount of beer to finish.  

Intermission gives everyone a chance to grab some delicious food from the garage (everyone brings something to share potluck style) and hydrate appropriately with water and Gatorade.  Our intermission generally lasts between 45 minutes to an hour depending on how people appear to be recovering. 

Following intermission, new teams were assigned again and we eased back into the events with Flip Cup tournament style with winning and losing brackets.  Flip Cup is a great equalizing game that doesn't need particular brawn or strength to complete it - so we play three variations of it throughout the day! 

Bong Races are a staple from our very first Beer Olympics.  We play Bong Races like Ice Cube Tray Canoe Races where only the winning teams move on to the next round.

Our newest challenge this year was Blow Ball which turned out to be absolutely hilarious and will definitely be returning as a challenge in the future.  (thank you BarMeister) .  Players could challenge one another for an extra +2 points to the winner.  With their chin on the table, the players tried to blow a ping pong ball off the opposite side of the table using only their breath.  If the ball fell off your side of the table, you lost.  Loser received no points and had to drink.

Survivor Flip Cup is one of my personal favorites because it's high action, is a great equalizer for all players, and as one of our players mentioned on Saturday, "Why do you get punished for winning in this game!?"  Eight players to a table and at the whistle everyone chugs and flips until they succeed, last one to flip gets 'kicked off the table.' Winners move on again and again until there is only one survivor.  Points are given by order of being kicked off the table (thanks again for the inspiration Canfield Beer Olympics!) 

With three empty kegs, two challenges and eight events completed, things understandably tend to fall off the deep end at this point in the day.

Players have one last chance to a challenge event, Chug Offs, in which they can challenge another player to a chugging contest (their choice to amount of beer).  First person to chug and flip their empty cup upside down on their head earns +3 points. 

 
Our final event this year was called Last Man Standing and had nothing to do with drinking beer (not that anyone really needed it anyway at this point).  We filled up two cups per person with water and had everyone hold their arms up and out for as long as they could (or felt like it).  As players dropped out (from boredom or need, we'll never know), the list of players were weaned down to only ten left and I announced how many points each person would receive for each drop out from 6 points to 24 points to the Last Man Standing!

This game took longer than I expected, close to 15 minutes, and there was a lot of moaning, groaning, and meditation happening as everyone's arms and shoulders ached.  It literally came down to the Last (wo)Man standing!

A short intermission follows all the events as the totals were calculated for each player and nominations for our awards were completed.  The awards ceremony is always hilarious and received with enough cheering you'd think it was actually more than a simple sash that players were earning for their performance.

Finally, we announced our highest scoring participants who make up our champion team for 2015:  The Survivors.  Celebrations all around as the four took the first drinks from our Studer Torpedo while Queen's We are the Champions blasted from the stereo system.

Hosting our Beer Olympic event takes a lot of work from planning, organizing, and to preparing our home and yard for the day but we do it because we love it and are so very grateful that we have so many wonderfully kind and generous friends in our life to share the day with us.

We've been laughing the past two days about how so many different branches of our life are represented at the day. In what universe is Brandon's high school football teammate challenging my sister's friend's boyfriend to a game of blow ball?  In what universe are my sister's sister in law, my other sister's friend's fiance, the cousin of the kid I used to babysit, and my college teammate's boyfriend all on the same beer pong team?  Only in Beer Olympics Universe, people.

 Seriously, the day shines a spotlight on all the best and brightest spots of our life, most of the times in no other way connected to each other and we are so grateful to all of you.  thank you, thank you, thank you.

Besides our Beer Olympics being an amazingly fun day with friends new and old, it is also for a good cause.  After costs, all proceeds are donated to a cause of our selection for the year and we are proud to say that we raised $205 to support baby Redden in his fight against cancer.  You can read more about Redden and his journey at his website here.

You can see all of our past Beer Olympic events here.

And to cover our own behinds:
- Team Studer (www.studerteam.blogspot.com or Tabitha and Brandon Studer) is not responsible for anyone's actions after following or using our Beer Olympic rules & guidelines. Each person is responsible for his/her own body and personal decisions. If you decide to use our Beer Olympics rules & guidelines, you are agreeing to take full responsibility for any actions, accidents, or injuries that may be caused due to using them. Don't be stupid- but if you are, it's on you, man.

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Logistics for Every Man for Himself Scoring:
Depending on how a player's team for that specific event performed, they each earned that allotment of points for themselves.   Our scoreboard including all the games and challenges as columns and each participant's name as rows.

Before the start of the event, I scribbled down each team member by team color and then used that list to determine points at the end of the game based on the overall team performance.  (It was actually a lot easier than I was anticipating).

During Anchorman, each person earned the team's points for their place in finishing, but the actual Anchorman for each team automatically earned an extra +3 pointstowards their score because their job sucks.  hahh

Some events like Slippy Cup and Survivor Flip Cup wasn't a team event, but I still had players assigned to a color team because it made it easier for them to figure out which heat or table they should participate in during the game.  Even though it was an individual event, it was easier to say - one person from each 'team' needs to be at each table - or needs to participate in each heat of Slippy Cup.

Overall, the Every Man for Himself process worked really well for the day.  Participants seemed to enjoy the pressure of earning their own points and it gave a really great foundation for everyone meeting more people than just their own teams.  Jury's out on whether or not this will be the new standard moving forward, but we had a great time switching it up this year!