46 players turn firehouse into cornhole tournament venue
A 46-player cornhole field filled Penn Forest’s firehouse with social and competitive brackets, turning truck bays into eight live games and a fundraiser.
The Penn Forest Volunteer Fire Company No. 2 firehouse became a full cornhole venue on Saturday, July 11, 2026, when 46 players filled the building at 1507 State Route 534 in Albrightsville for a tournament that split the field into social and competitive divisions. What looked from the outside like a local fundraiser inside the bays where fire trucks are normally parked had the pace and structure of a serious stop, with eight games running at once.
Players started with a four-game round robin before moving into double-elimination bracket play, a format that kept the night moving and gave both casual and competitive entries a clear path through the field. The fire company’s role was more than just providing space. The $25 entry fee helped support the volunteer department, and prizes were awarded in both divisions, turning the event into a revenue source as well as a competition.
Joe Loizzi was one of the faces of the tournament and one of the clearest examples of how cornhole has grown from local play into a broader competitive circuit. “I played here at the firehouse on Tuesday nights, then found a tournament at Mohegan Sun and have been playing ever since,” Loizzi said. His sons, Junior and Jordan, were also involved, and Junior has already built a winning résumé while traveling to tournaments in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia and other states.
The field also included players with deeper regional credentials. AJ Meranti of Old Forge was described as one of Northeast Pennsylvania’s top players after eight years in the sport, while Trisha Nawrock of Pittston linked her run in the game to a Reynolds sponsorship that came through ACL play in Ohio. Their presence gave the Albrightsville event a level of credibility that reached well beyond a single-night fundraiser.
The tournament also showed how organized cornhole has become. Small electronic scoring devices clipped to each post displayed the players’ names, team names and scores, a detail that made the firehouse setup feel closer to a sanctioned arena than a backyard setup. That fits the sport’s larger direction: the American Cornhole League calls itself the premier league for professional and recreational play in the United States and publishes official 2025/2026 rules, while the American Cornhole Organization says it has served as the official governing body since 2005. At Penn Forest, those standards were visible in real time, from the bracket board to the truck bays.
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