'The Win Is Never The Goal': Why Competitors Pursue The 6 Events

The particular feat of having a career win in each of the events at Wonderboy took off after Milton entrepreneur Greg Doan reportedly became the first competitor to do so in 2016. He popularized a version of the challenge that includes Tug-of-War, Crokinole, Euchre, Ping Pong, Darts and Poker. Since then, the exact event list has been a topic of debate. Today, a version called the Little List, named after Canadian outdoorsman Alex Little, is considered the most legitimate in the Wonderboy community. It takes into account the original six events when determining wins, swapping the Crokinole event from Doan’s list for Logsaw.

Mike Desroches didn't set out to win all six events over his career — a trait that is surprisingly common among competitors at Wonderboy. He began competing when his brother invited him to Wonderboy in 2004 — a daunting tournament even for seasoned players. Having just gone through a job change in his 30s and feeling like his life resembled a "big dumpster fire," Desroches thought there wasn't anything holding him back.

"If I hadn't been at such a low point in my life, I probably never would have won poker," Desroches said. "At some point it just occurred to me that I had nothing left to lose."

When Desroches got back from Wolf Lake, he got a tattoo of a poker chip to remember his adventure and decided to quit competing. But eleven months later, he said he felt a calling to attend another tournament, and made plans for Wonderboy 2005. In the fourteen years that it took him to win the rest of the six events on the Doan List, Desroches said he backed away from the tournament several times, but the emotional rejuvenation he experienced with each win always made him return.

"What happened was each time I did win one of these events, there would be this rich lesson that would come out of it that was immediately relevant," Desroches said. "It became this fifteen-year conversation between the events and my personal life."

Stories of how Wonderboy can foster intense personal growth, however, don't diminish the elements of extreme danger prevalent in the most common Wonderboy narratives. Each February brings tournament-related afflictions as dozens of people attempt to win the nearly 30-inch trophy.

Paul Trahan, who has wins in five events and led an all-Calgary expedition to Wolf Lake in 2000, said part of what makes attending Wonderboy so dangerous is that competitors can become consumed with blind desire to get the win and will ignore crucial signs of exhaustion or hazardous conditions. In his 2006 attempt in Poker, Trahan had to make an early exit only two players from the top because of inebriation, a decision that prioritized safety over winning.

"What you have to remember in the decision-making process is that the win is only the halfway point," Trahan said. "The win is never the goal. Ever. The number one goal is always to come back alive."

A local favourite, Steve Pate says it's necessary to constantly analyze risks is when competing in games as severe as the six events, and that most people grapple with the possibility of inebriation before they start an event. Each serious competition is made up of conscious choices that he believes aren't always acknowledged in stories about Wonderboy, and Poker in particular.

"I do think that sometimes gets lost in the mix, when people just talk about the beer, they just talk about the hot tub, but there are actually a lot more decisions in between those points and in addition to those factors that do contribute to the outcome," Pate said.

Though the perceived point of the Six Events Club is to have a career win in each of Wonderboy’s events, those who have completed this challenge often don't cite winning as the most formative experience. What stands out, according to Little, Desroches and Doan, isn't the glory that comes with looking down from the top of the podium. It was everything that led up to it.

When Trahan returns to Wolf Lake seven years after his last attempt, he will be trying to finally win at Euchre — his last on the challenge's list. But, he says, he finds the act of winning itself somewhat underwhelming.

"When I did make it to the winner’s podium, what I realized is that standing on the stage, talking into a fake microphone, it doesn't change you and doesn't change the world," Trahan said. "It's really about the journey, the journey is the most important thing in any event."

As previous Wonderboy tournaments have shown, extreme competitiveness, especially in the form of a Six Events bid, poses significant risk. It's the powerful inner voice, though, that sets competitors on paths up the precarious Glamorgan Rd anyway and takes them beyond cementing themselves in this elite club.

"Bragging rights ain't gonna get you to the top of any of those podiums," Trahan said. "There's gotta be something much, much deeper inside of you that drives that quest."

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

The ‘Six Events’ are composed of winning each of the events in Wonderboy over the course of a career. Different lists include slight variations, but generally the same core is maintained. The six events depend on the definition used for an event:  the first is logsaw vs crokinole; and the second depends on whether one includes the Special, which is a now-retired event.

The modern era of Wonderboy began in 2001, when record keeping was digitized.  Prior to 2001, Wonderboy administrators kept track of the tournament on clay tablets.  These tablets were later re-used in the building of a retaining wall for the volleyball court, the event details forever lost.  Thus the Six Events are looked at only in the modern era of Wonderboy.

The ‘Little List’ is comprised of the original six events in Wonderboy: tug-of-war, logsaw, euchre, poker, pingpong and darts.  The list is named after Alex Little, the first (and only) competitor to complete wins in all six events.  Alex achieved this milestone at WB 2019 with his victory with in pingpong.  There are seven competitors who are one victory away from joining the Six Events Club: Alain Charlebois (needing a win in poker), Eric D’Souza (euchre), Kirk Cooper (pingpong), Greg Doan (logsaw), Mike Desroches (logsaw), Steve Pate (pingpong) and Paul Trahan (euchre).

There is also an alternate six-event list, the so-called ‘Doan List’.  This list swaps out logsaw for crokinole (an option now available to competitors during the tournament).  Greg Doan was the first to complete the Doan List with his poker triumph in 2016; Mike Desroches followed two years, winning both pingpong and crokinole in 2018.  Detractors suggest that the Doan List should be limited to those who have never competed in logsaw.  Otherwise it’s like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing which six events stick.

The addition of crokinole as an event in WB2013 gave rise to another list called the ‘Seven Events’.  No one in the history of Wonderboy has ever recorded a victory in all seven events.  There are five competitors just one victory away from completing the career heptalogy:  Alain Charlebois (needing a win in poker), Greg Doan (logsaw), Mike Desroches (logsaw), Steve Pate (pingpong) and Alex Little (crokinole).  Messrs. Doan, Desroches and Little don’t usually compete in their remaining event, leaving Charlebois and Pate as the competitors most likely to be the first to join the Seven Events Club.  Historically, Steve Pate has only two points in his career in pingpong; the smart money is on Charlebois to be the first to seven.

Five competitors have points in the Special:  Eric D’Souza, Ryan Lumbard, Steve Pate, Kelly Jones and Guy Pate.  The Special event was effectively discontinued in WB2014; the Wonderboy Events Committee formally retired the Special following a comprehensive events review in 2019.