Hello Young Alums!

With summer right around the corner, it is officially time to start showing your Lehigh spirit and practicing for everyone’s favorite tailgating/barbecue past-time: Lehigh-themed corn-hole!  We embarked on the weekend adventure of creating our own boards three Lehigh football seasons ago and these “L-Train” boards have provided countless hours of friendly competition and fun.

Here are a couple pro-tips to make your build go as smoothly as possible!

1) Do your homework: A great one-stop shop for board dimensions, materials lists, bag sewing instructions, and rules can be found here: http://www.cornholehowto.com/

2) Make your boards from 2×3’s, not 2×4’s.  This keeps them as light as possible, makes transporting them in the back seat of a car a bit easier and gets you close enough to the regulation height of the front lip.

3) Cutting the 6″ hole:  We made our first Lehigh set with the hole drill seen in the picture below, but subsequently made two other sets and cut the holes with a jigsaw.  The jigsaw is much easier, and if you take your time, it yields a high-quality result.

4)  Counter-sink: The directions from the link above allude to this, but definitely pre-drill and counter-sink your screws on the top of the board and putty over them before you prime/paint so they don’t show!

5) Template: Pick your design (google images can give you lots of Lehigh-themed ideas/logos).  We set our template to proper size in powerpoint, then saved it as a PDF and printed it as a poster.  Print your template on heavy paper, or use normal paper and back it with masking tape… it needs to have enough weight to it to hold its shape while you’re cutting it out and tracing it on the board.

6) Bags: If you don’t have a sewing machine, don’t fret!  You can find cornhole bags in any colors you want on Amazon.  We used fabric paint on blue and red duck cloth to make ours:

7) Admire your handiwork:

8 and 9) Add handles and enjoy: (a cheap brass gate/cabinet handle will do) on the sides of the boards to make them easy to carry, invite your friends over and open up another keg of beer!

We hope this post will inspire you to make some boards of your own and bring some Lehigh spirit to a yard or parking lot near you.

Cheers,
Mike Hodsdon ’10
Katherine Glass-Hardenbergh ’11