Think you’re the best dad? Fathers fight it out in the Dad Games

Sophia Solano

Don Alley trained decades for this moment. It finally came, 21 years later, in a Prince George’s County parking lot.

The event: One-Trip Grocery Bag Relay. The goal: carry 15 shopping bags from the trunk of a Range Rover inside in a single journey. His competition: two other teams made up of dozens of fellow fathers.

Alley, whose children range from 3 to 21, is the kind of dad who goes to all of his kids’ sports practices and who loves competition. The tedious act of transporting groceries from the car to the kitchen is a matter of personal pride. So when the rest of his team had finished shoving Frosted Flakes, cans of beans and cases of bottled water into canvas totes and throwing them in the back of the SUV, he gathered all the items he could and took off toward the doors.

Because of a technical error, the teams had to redo their attempts. Alley’s teammates doubted whether he could replicate his first performance, which ended in a sliding finish and bloody knee.

“I got four kids, and you think I got no energy?” he told them. “I got nothing but energy!”

This was the inaugural Dad Games, a competition series developed to celebrate the contributions of fathers and male role models in the home. Alley was one of 250 participants who came to an Upper Marlboro, Maryland, church Saturday to fight for the title of Dad of Dads - a designation attained by winning events like the Diaper Change Race and Wiffle Ball Home Run Derby. They were supported by their partners and kids (who, with tiny black-and-white striped shirts and stopwatches around their necks, refereed many of the events.

The event also comes with prizes, including a $250 D.C. Improv gift card to the Dad Joke Competition champion, and a signed Stephen Curry jersey to the winner of Trash Can Basketball. But organizers hope the games also signify an ongoing fight for community, recognition and connection among fathers in an era of isolation and loneliness.

“Take the competition seriously,” Dad Games founder Joshua DuBois said during his opening remarks. “Yourself? Not so much. We don’t need anyone yelling at a 7-year-old referee today.”

And with that, the games began.

The idea to create an Olympic-style test of fatherhood came at the end of the professional football season. DuBois’s group of friends looked away from the television at the D.C. barbershop where they’d watched Sunday night games and realized that no more football meant no more weekly hangouts.

They started discussing ways to stay connected. Meanwhile, DuBois began noticing that his wife, Michelle, was part of more intentional parenting communities than him - WhatsApp chains for moms at their kids’ schools, and Instagram communities of parents sharing tips. Why didn’t fathers around him have a place to gather and talk about parenting?

“It was a bit of a push from her being like, ‘Well, if that doesn’t exist, create it,’” DuBois said.

The idea for the Dad Games emerged through discussions with DuBois’s fraternity brothers and prayer groups. The venture is now a registered nonprofit in Maryland. But it wasn’t DuBois’s first spin in the fatherhood-programming space. During President Barack Obama’s administrations, DuBois led the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the White House, where he helped the president launch fatherhood initiatives like national educational tours, mentoring programming and the nonprofit My Brother’s Keeper. DuBois said he’s found a passion working in the men’s mental health space.

“Men tend to self-select into loneliness, into isolation, and assume that no one wants to hear about their problems,” he said. “They feel like they’ve got to navigate this thing called life alone.”

DuBois intends to take these games on the road: He and the organization’s volunteers plan to host Dad Games in Nashville, Atlanta, Los Angeles and other cities across the U.S. before Father’s Day next year - the date they hope to host a national Dad Games championship competition. To DuBois, it’s all part of an effort to combat that isolation, with the help of homemade slime and lots of crumpled paper aimed at trash bins.

“When you get something wrong, you’re wondering if you’re the only person who got that wrong,” he said of fathering. “When you feel the joy of getting something right, you want somebody to celebrate that with. Or, you know, ‘My kid just struck out three times in a row at T-ball,’ and it’s hard to strike out at T-ball so they’re really bummed. Those are the kinds of conversations you want to have with other dads.”

After the conclusion of many raucous rounds of Trash Can Basketball, a game that involved crumpled paper, waste baskets and a ticking clock, the men moved on to the Dad Joke Competition. They climbed the stairs to a stage, grabbed the mic with the swagger of any stand-up comic, and delivered a spitfire stream:

“What was the one-legged man doing at the ATM? Checking his balance.”

“Did you hear about the restaurant they opened on the moon? The food was great, but it had no atmosphere.”

“How does a man satisfy his wife in bed?”

At that line, DuBois leaped in with all the gusto of a dad catching a teetering cup, covered the microphone with one hand and asked the competitor where this joke was going (this was, after all, a family-friendly event). They consulted. Finally, the audience got the punch line: “By sleeping on the couch.”

Nana Fredua Ageyman, a 48-year-old New Jersey father of two visiting family in the area, wasn’t planning to join this competition. But his 12-year-old son begged him to.

“I do it for my kids,” he said from the stage before a one-liner about nacho cheese. “I push them out of their comfort zone and they push me out of mine.”

All of the participants’ kids seemed to yell in unison when the Diaper Change Race got underway. With a dozen dads, stacks of diapers and piles of infant onesies, the objective was to be the first to change and dress a plastic baby doll. Amid the (human) kids’ shouts, many of the dads cheered for one another.

“Sometimes you can lose yourself or not feel appreciated,” said Terry Mundell, a 39-year-old father of two from Lanham, Maryland. But to him, this event felt like “pouring in each other’s cups right now and showing appreciation for one another.”

Meanwhile, at the Slime Battle, DuBois’s 7-year-old daughter, Adelaide, stuck her fingers into dozens of jars filled with thick, sparkly goop.

“It’s not sticky, but it’s not perfect,” she declared from the judges’ table. “Not stretchy, but great creativity.”

“This kid is brutal,” called out one competitor.

On the other side of the room, fathers competed in a Daughter’s Hair-Do Face-Off, tasked with prepping mannequins’ hair for “a day at school.” As the judges came around, one dad finished wrangling his doll’s strands into twists - and plucking loose tufts out of the brush he used before they could see.

Throughout the day, the Dad Games organizers had mental health coaches available on-site. Proceeds from the event were used to subsidize counseling sessions for fathers who sought them out.

Toward the end of the five-hour event, organizers realized the point system they devised to determine a champion didn’t account for the competitors who had to leave midway for sports practices and birthday parties. No Dad of Dads was crowned that day.

But the dads didn’t seem to mind. Back on the battlefield - between rounds of the One-Trip Grocery Challenge - men chatted, laughed, discussed their kids, sports teams and hobbies. One took off his baseball cap and placed it on his waddling son’s head, shielding his big, round eyes from the sun. Another lifted his daughter high in his arms and spun in a wide circle. She giggled as the yellow tulle on her dress floated around her.

“It’s great to see fathers out here interacting, and then having our kids out here, watching us do things together,” said Rodney Anderson Jr. A few minutes earlier, he had been pummeled with back pounds and handshakes when he won the challenge, along with the prize of grocery store gift cards, for his team.

As he spoke, his toddler hung off his calf. “All positivity, right? It’s really about being that role model.”