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Sports

Skeeball, Cornhole League Will Soon Start at Barking Dog

Washington, D.C.-based non-typical sports company expands with College Park league.

Those who go to the bar with pockets full of quarters, just to roll a hardwood ball up an incline for points, will soon have an opportunity to expand their competition. College Park now has a skeeball and cornhole league at a local bar.

It’s a part of United Social Sports, a 2-year-old company that organizes over 22 different social sport leagues in the Washington, D.C. area out of neighborhood bars and parks. United Social Sports has started a league through College Park’s , and will start hosting games every Wednesday, starting Jan. 18.

United Social Sports has attracted a niche market with its less typical sports, said Dan Shank, one of the company’s two full-time employees. The sports vary between cities, and can include kickball, shuffleboard, mini golf, dodge ball, volleyball, bocce, cornhole or skeeball. Leagues play one or multiple sports, either in the participating bars or in nearby fields or gyms. Each league typically has eight to 16 teams of about 50 to 100 people.

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For a fee depending on the sport, players over 21 years old get eight weeks of game play, plus free giveaways, drink specials, a T-shirt and information about other social events. Part-time hosts run game nights and make sure all the players are having a good time. They provide trivia contests and special game rounds.

Shank said he and owner Robert Albrecht put a lot of effort into the “social” aspect of the leagues. Players are given the opportunity to attend other events like charity fundraising games, trips like snow tubing and an end-of-season party.

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The leagues are great, Shank said, for people who are new to the city and want to meet others, and for people who just want to spend time with friends. Albrecht and Shank were both in fraternities and are very social people themselves. Shank said they strive to get people to meet others.

United Social Sports operates out of Northeast D.C., but Albrecht originally started the company from his apartment in northern Virginia. The first skeeball league had about 200 people. Now, the business has over 16,000 players, and 1,300 people are expected to register for next season. In the past two months, four new leagues were established in D.C., and in the past six months, four new cities were added: Philadelphia, Austin, Baltimore and Harrisburg.

Teams or individual players can register on the website for United Social Sport’s first College Park season.

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