Ranking The Best Games To Play On The Beach All Summer Long
Memorial Day Weekend just wrapped up which means that summer is here. Time to start sneaking out of work early on Friday afternoons to head to the shore for the weekend. You have yourself a Friday night, spend all day Saturday frying your ass off in the sun on the beach, drink a hundred beers, go hard on Saturday night, fry yourself again on the beach on Sunday, and then either have the most miserable drive home of your life every Sunday night or try to play hero ball by waking up at the ass crack of dawn to drive to work straight from the shore on Monday morning.
And that's life for the next 14 weekends until Labor Day. You wouldn't want it any other way. Maybe you live in the middle of the country and you go to the lake instead. I'm not going to act like the beach isn't drastically better, but at the end of the day it's all the same shit. And at the end of the day, you and your crew need a few games to play because "I'm the most competitive person you've ever met. Like I'll literally get competitive over anything" is your main personality trait. You're not just going to sit there on the beach all day and read a book like some fuckin' nerd. You're going to pound light beer and treat every backyard/beach game like it's game 7 of the Finals.
So here are the best games to play all summer on the beach.
Honorable Mention (because it's not actually a game)
Digging A Big-Ass Hole
Nothing gets the boys going quite like bringing a few shovels to the beach. You got a few hours to kill? Let's see how deep we can get that thing. You never start out with a plan, but as the hole keeps getting bigger and bigger, the wheels start turning. Guys start seeing the bigger picture. You carve out some steps to get in and out of the whole. Maybe you pack some sand down to make a few seats in the hole. Everybody instantly turns into an engineer and an architect. You get some more dudes involved and all of a sudden 5 hours just passed by, your hands are cut up to shreds, but you have a sick hole to enjoy for the next 15 minutes before everybody decides to head back to the house to start drinking before the night.
Thunderstruck
All-time drinking game. But you need a pretty decent sized crew for this one to really build up the energy you're looking for. If anyone is unfamiliar, you throw on Thunderstruck by AC/DC and get everybody in a circle. Every time the "thunder" lyric is said, the next person in the circle starts to drink. It starts off with just a few 3-second chugs, but eventually someone ends up getting stuck with a whole minute. Great fun for the whole family.
Good In Theory, But Overall Just Okay
Washers
Washers is a super simple game. And that's what makes it perfect for the beach, right? Doesn't take a ton of thinking. Doesn't take a lot of explaining if someone is playing for the first time. But I think washers is a game that's better suited for the backyard as opposed to the beach. Because unless you're playing in hard sand closer to the water, you're losing the washers anytime you don't land one in the box. Those things just sink into the sand and you spend half the day looking for them. Eventually one team only has 3 washers to throw while the other team has 4, so you have to throw one back in the middle of the round. It just becomes a whole ordeal. Washers is a good game, but it's just not great for the beach.
Horseshoes
Again, fantastic game. No doubt about that. But sometimes where you're set up on the beach, the sand is too soft for the stake to really hold up. But if you go down closer to the hard sand, now you're in the danger zone of someone's toes getting absolutely fucked by a bouncing horseshoe. I still think it's a timeless classic, and always gets the people going. But there are just too many downsides to horseshoes on the beach for me to have it higher on my list.
Timeless Classics
Wiffle Ball
What's great about wiffle ball is it's versatility depending on how many people are in your crew. You want to field an entire roster consisting of an infield and outfield? Go nuts. Just have 6-8 guys looking to get a quick sesh of whiff in? All you need is a pitcher and 2 outfielders. Heck, even if you have less than that you can always just turn it into a homerun derby. Other games like horseshoes always limit you because it's 1v1 or 2v2 at most. But wiffle ball can work with it's just a couple of you, or you have a squad of 20.
I'll admit, I'm not a great wiffle ball player. But very few feelings in life are better than when you connect with one and launch that shit into orbit in front of everybody on the beach. Shit is exhilarating.
Seeing Who Can Throw The Ball The Furthest
So this game always just starts off by a couple of guys wanting to have a quick little toss. Maybe you're throwing the ol' pigskin around. Maybe you brought the lacrosse sticks and are having a catch. Maybe you've got the baseball gloves and a ball with you. Either way, you start off with the intentions of just having a little catch. All of a sudden, you find yourselves getting further and further apart. Then you reach a certain distance and it just devolves into seeing who can throw the ball further than the other guy(s). You're not looking to throw a catchable ball, you're looking to launch it at least 7 yards past where your buddy thinks you can reach. By the end of this game your shoulder is absolutely fucked and you might need Tommy John. But as long as you weren't the first one to tap out, you get to leave the beach that day with your honor and pride.
Bocce
Bocce is a gentleman's game. Which kind of takes the air out of it for me. I love the shit talking aspect of most beach games. Like I want everybody to have fun out there, but I also want friendships to get a little ugly for a few hours on the beach. And bocce just doesn't offer as many opportunities to shit talk your pals as other games.
With that being said…it's an awesome beach game and a great way to kill a quick 30-45 minutes. You can easily play with a drink in your hand. And while it doesn't pack as much competitive drive as some of the other games, that makes it the perfect change up throughout the day. Maybe the wiffle ball game just got a little too intense, bocce serves as a great way for everyone to cool down. You need a game like that to take the edge off.
Beach Volleyball
Now for most folks, beach volleyball is the game that requires the most amount of planning and preparation beforehand. Unless you go to a beach that has some nets already set up, you need someone to bring a net down. You need a few guys who are going to help set the net up. And then unless you're professionals, you probably need at least 3-4 people on each team to play. Moral of the story here is that losers without any friends probably aren't playing a ton of beach volleyball.
But as long as you have a crew, this has the ability to be the highlight of your weekend. Because out of all the beach games, this one is an actual sport. So that is going to ramp up the competitiveness. It might just be a game. It might have no impact on any aspect of your actual life. But for those 60 or so minutes that you're playing, this is the most important thing in the world to you. Every point matters. Teammate gets selfish and sets the return right back over the net off the first touch instead of trying to set someone else up for a spike? You rip them a new asshole. It's really the best game out there for guys who care too much about things that mean so little.
The Elite
Polish Horseshoes
Also known as "beersbee" or "frisknock" in some corners of the world. What really sets this game apart from the rest of the bunch is the fact that this one is truly catered towards drinking. Don't get me wrong, drinking plays a huge role in all of these games. You need to have a drink in one hand in order to play. Also, there's a little more skill involved here than some other games which means you really get to keep this as an exclusive game to everyone who is good at it. If you suck at polish horseshoes, you'd probably hate playing the game and will quit after one time playing. Everybody likes wiffle ball, even if they suck at it. So the competition can get watered down a bit. Not with polish. It's only for those who want to be great.
Kan Jam
I'm going to go with back-to-back disc games here. The reason why they're elite but not all the way at the top is just because these games don't always do as well when the wind picks up. Typically you're going to have to fight through some windy conditions on the beach, but somedays it is so bad that it makes the disc games borderline unplayable.
But as long as there's just a slight little breeze in the air? Kan Jam rules, and it rules hard. Obviously the biggest thing that separates Kan Jam from the rest is the opportunity for the instant win walk-off. Nothing gets the boys fired up quite like slotting it in Kan Jam. Getting your dicks kicked in and down 17-1? It doesn't matter, because you can still win the game with just one toss. You're never all the way out of it. Also there's just a great feeling that comes with you and your teammates being in the zone where almost every throw is an automatic bucket. You're on the same page, working with the same touch, it's poetry in motion.
Spikeball
It doesn't get more intense than spikeball. This ain't your everyday Joe Schmo's game to play on the beach. If you break out the spikeball net, you better be ready to work your fucking ass off. It's the athlete's beach game. You need to stretch, you need to wrap up your knees and ankles, and maybe those 5 cigars you inhaled on the golf course earlier in the morning might come back to haunt you here. It's the furthest thing possible from relaxing on the beach.
But holy shit does it rule. This game is just constant chaos. You've got bodies flying around everywhere, the ball getting launched into oblivion with one hit and then tapped with the faintest little touch on the next. It lends itself to some incredible highlights. And if you and your partner just happen to be way better at everybody else in the group at it? Well you get to experience 20 of the most satisfying minutes of domination ever before everybody else decides its not even worth playing against you guys anymore. And on top of it all, nothing feels better than jumping into the ocean after you just worked up a monster sweat and you're covered head-to-toe in sand.
Cornhole aka Baggo
Cornhole is the most perfect game ever created. It’s simple enough that anyone can play, but you can also get really nasty at Cornhole and then it gets pretty damn competitive. The great thing about cornhole is that you can keep your drink in your hand the entire time. Honestly the only downside to that is if you play long enough, you end up drinking so many beers that you can't do the math anymore to keep score.
The simplicity of cornhole is obviously a huge pro. You just put down the boards, throw some bags, and can call it a day. But once you get to the point where you actually know what you're doing, there's also plenty of strategy involved. You can strategically toss some bags on the board to block the other team. You can slide, you can airmail, you can make the game as complex as you want. Or you can just be a meathead and go for the dunk every time. That's the beauty of it.
You can stand there all day long, toss a few bags, drink a few beers, not get disgustingly sweaty, and have yourself the best day ever. Which is really what the summer is all about.