TASP 2027 - Saturday, September 18th (Tentative)

Twenty years.

Somehow, against all odds, questionable athletic ability, aging bodies, increasingly creative interpretations of the rules, and enough booze to shorten several lifespans, the Annual Summer Pentathlon officially made it to Year 20. And TASP delivered.

For the first time, golf was gone from the lineup. In its place, we kicked things off with low-score bowling before heading to the house for an afternoon and evening of bags, bocce, pickleball, beer pong, side quests, tacos, college football and general nonsense.

It was exactly what Year 20 needed to be.

We started the morning without knowing our partners, with two exceptions.

Defending champions Tim Delaca and Nate Mascarenas were reunited after last year's record-setting run, when they somehow won four of five events and finished with 21 points.

Blake Ferguson, after finishing second last year, earned the right to select his partner and went with three-time ASP champion Aaron Brooks. Everyone else was left to fate. First, though, we had some bowling to take care of.

Low-score bowling started a little slow. Then the drinks started flowing. Pins started falling. Gutters started getting rolled. Unfortunately, when the entire objective is to knock down as few pins as possible, gutters aren't exactly the gift they normally are. Just ask Lizzet.

After Game 1, we drew partners and found ourselves with two teams tied atop the leaderboard heading into Game 2.

Troy and Peter, aka Pistol Pete, were reunited two years after coming painfully close to winning the whole thing together. That year ended with Troy and Pete staring down a double seven on the dartboard with a championship within reach. They both missed, opening the door for Barr and Brunker to repeat after defeating Freddy Walberg and Jake Fuller in the infamous Jenga tiebreaker.

We will never play Jenga again.

But back to bowling. Troy and Pete were tied with Freddy Wallberg and second-year man Sean Riedel, who returned after making plenty of noise as a rookie last year. Game 2 came down to the final frames. Pete carried most of the load, and Troy managed some last-frame heroics to seal the first event of TASP by just three pins. The old partners were back. For about an hour or two, anyway.

From there, we headed to the house, where the vibes were high and things immediately started getting wonderfully distracted. College football was on. Drinks were everywhere. There were side quests to the pool and pool table. Somewhere in between all of that, we actually managed to keep playing the Pentathlon.

Bocce delivered some epic games and huge comebacks.

Bags featured a few absolute heat checks from JStrunk.

And the amount of alcohol being consumed suggested that athletic performance might not improve as the afternoon went along.

Troy and Pete's early lead quickly disappeared when they ran into Jeremy "Kobe" Strunk and Jason "Yes, I Didn't Lose My Glasses This Year" Brunker on Bags, followed by a late surge from James "Forgot My Shoes So Stopped and Bought Some Fancy White Ones and Then Left My Flip Flops at the House "Barr and Javin on Bocce. The scoreboard started tightening.

Defending champs Timmy and Nate were lurking. Freddy and Sean kept themselves right in the middle of everything by taking the bags title.

By the time we reached the final two events, nobody had really taken control.

Which is exactly how we like it.

After the catered tacos arrived and everyone properly refueled, we wandered outside hoping the setting sun might finally provide something resembling shade.

Then came pickleball. For a group containing quite a few people who had never actually played pickleball before, confidence was remarkably high. Knowledge of the rules was considerably lower.

There was confusion, questionable calls and a whole lot of yelling "IN!" or "OUT!" depending almost entirely on your rooting interests.

Fanch and Spud made a legitimate run before ultimately falling to the eventual event winners - Sean Riedel and Freddy "I Hold the Paddle With Two Hands" Wallberg.

Two hands or not, it worked. They rolled through the field, grabbed the five points and suddenly found themselves sitting at 12 points heading into the final event. They were in the driver's seat. Sort of.

Beer pong was all that remained. Freddy and Sean had 12. Timmy and Nate sat at 9 and still had a path to an outright repeat championship if they could win the event and Freddy and Sean failed to score.

Then Freddy and Sean gave Nate and Timmy exactly what they needed and what nobody wanted for them. A first-round exit. The door was wide open. Timmy and Nate suddenly had a chance to complete the repeat.

There was only one problem... Brian Lizzet and Chris Czyz.

Last year, Lizzet was one half of the Agents of Chaos with Troy. This year he found himself paired with Czyz, who had returned after missing his first ASP in 18 years last year thanks to Storm Amy.

Apparently Chris decided to bring a storm of his own. Lizzet and Czyz stormed through beer pong and won the event, shutting the door on the Timmy and Nate repeat and leaving Freddy and Sean standing atop the leaderboard.

Did Freddy and Sean back into the championship a little bit? Maybe. Does anyone care? Not really. The scoreboard says 12 points and TASP Champions - Sean Riedel and Freddy Wallberg. Jake Fuller reading this just punching air I know it.

Sean Riedel / Freddy Wallberg - 12

Tim Delaca / Nate Mascarenas - 11

Jason Brunker / Jeremy Strunk - 7

Barr / Javin Midkiff - 7

Chris Czyz / Brian Lizzet - 6

Kolaczynski / Troy Smith - 5

Blake Ferguson / Aaron Brooks - 4

Shawn "Spud" Mascarenas / Josh Fancher - 3

Twenty years in and apparently the secret to winning an ASP championship is a two-handed pickleball grip and losing in the first round of beer pong. Take notes.

As the official competition wound down, we moved into some good old-fashioned Texas Hold 'Em. This also led to one of the more important discoveries of TASP 2026: Shawn "Spud" Mascarenas may be color blind. Despite repeated explanations of which poker chips were which color, Spud required approximately 47 reminders throughout the game.

Shoutout to Blake for sticking around and dealing once things got down to heads-up between Troy and Spud. Eventually, Spud put it all in. Troy flipped over pocket aces. That was a tough way for Spud to  find out his night was over.

Next year, buddy.

A very special thank you needs to go to Jeremy Strunk, aka JStrunk.com, for helping us secure the house and making the second half of the day possible.

Seriously, sir, it was greatly appreciated. Still wondering who put on the drone light show. Haha!

And finally, thank you to everyone who came out and made Year 20 what it was.

Twenty years ago, five former coworkers had an idea to get together for a day, compete in some events, drink a few beers and have some fun.

There is absolutely no way any of us could have imagined we'd still be doing this two decades later. Yet here we are. Different events. Different partners. New faces mixed in with guys who have been doing this from the beginning. New champions every few years. Old stories that somehow get better every time they're told. And we're still having a blast.

That's probably the coolest part of all of this. The trophies and standings matter because we're all competitive enough to make them matter. But twenty years from that first event, what keeps this thing going is getting everybody together for one Saturday, talking shit, laughing way too much and creating another batch of stories we'll inevitably bring up at future ASPs. That's a pretty damn good tradition.

Congratulations again to Sean Riedel and Freddy Wallberg, your TASP champions.

Twenty years down.

The shenanigans continue...