One of the country's best Pop-A-Shot players lives in Garden City

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A year ago this week, Scott Setzke was flipping through TV channels and came across the Pop-A-Shot National Championship airing on ESPN2.

You know Pop-A-Shot, right? The electronic arcade game from the 1980s that challenges you to swish as many basketballs as you can before time expires? Yeah, that's the one. You can still find a cabinet or two stuffed in the corners at bars and restaurants, albeit finding one without deflated balls is another thing.

Anyway, last August was the first time in 25 years Pop-A-Shot hosted a National Championship, so, of course, it made sense that it became part of ESPN8 The Ocho's annual programming. That's the weekend every summer when The Worldwide Leader in Sports rebrands to ESPN8 and airs nothing but obscure sports and contests, from belt-sander racing to freestyle trampolining, auctioneer championships and, believe it or not, waitstaff competitions.

If you're trying to remember why The Ocho sounds so familiar, that's because it's the fictional channel that aired the final tournament in the Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn movie, "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story," in 2004.

"What is this?" Setzke thought at the time, leaning forward in his seat inside his Garden City home, closely watching as a 37-year-old father of two from the Chicago suburbs dominated in Pop-A-Shot on his TV. "I haven't thought about this in 15 years. I used to be good at this."

Live from Rock Hill, South Carolina, eight regional qualifiers, seeded in a bracket by highest score, squared off in head-to-head play, competing in the Elite Format of Pop-A-Shot.

That version gives everyone 40 seconds to make as many shots as possible. However, if they score 40 points or more during that allotted time, they get an additional 15 seconds called Bonus Time.

All made baskets are worth two points, except in the final 10 seconds of each segment. Those makes are worth three.

After Bulls fan Josh Caputo won the National Championship, outscoring Brett Morse-Karzen, another Illinois native, by 33 points in the final round, a vision for Setzke's next calendar year became clear.

"I can beat these guys without even practicing," thought Setzke, an automotive buyer in metro Detroit. "And I haven't even played in 15 years. I've got to figure out how to qualify for this next year."

As he learned over the following months, doing so is easier said than done, even with his background.

No, his path to the 2025 Pop-A-Shot National Championship, slated for Aug. 1 in Orlando, Florida, was filled with ups and downs, misses and makes and challenges he never imagined he'd have to face.

This is his story.

From Palace prince to carnival king

As a sixth-grader in 1992, Setzke entered a father-son Pop-A-Shot competition at the YMCA in Wyandotte. He and his father, Roger, blew away the competition, becoming the "Hoop Shoot '92 Winner." His grand prize? They received tickets to a Pistons game and got to play Pop-A-Shot on the hardwood at The Palace of Auburn Hills alongside all the winners from other local YMCAs.

"The machines weren't even plugged in," Scott said. "They just let us shoot for a minute and rushed us off the court."

Scott pulled the plug on his actual playing career at Wilson Middle School two years later, citing that "everybody just got bigger, faster and stronger -- and I didn't. It just kind of ended there for me."

Sure, he watched the Bad Boys Pistons and the Fab Five at Michigan, but he didn't think about his own participation in the sport again until a couple of years after graduating from Eastern Michigan University in the early 2000s.

While walking through the annual Mount Carmel Festival in Wyandotte, he noticed a Pop-A-Shot cabinet. Lo and behold, they were having a competition.

"Oh, I remember being good at this," Scott thought. "I won that competition when I was a little kid."

They recorded everyone's scores over the first three days of the carnival. On Sunday night, they called back the contestants with the five best scores to compete for a trophy.

Scott easily won.

The following year, he returned to Mount Carmel to defend his title, earning passage into the Sunday finale again. Only this time, he didn't show. He had other plans scheduled for that night.

And that was the last time he thought about Pop-A-Shot for the next 15 years -- until he saw Caputo on The Ocho.

Setzke strikes out at Busch Stadium

Scott signed up for the Pop-A-Shot newsletter and eagerly awaited information about upcoming qualifiers.

One was eventually announced for St. Louis just before Memorial Day weekend earlier this year. And the best part? The Detroit Tigers were in town for a three-game series against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium.

He made a father-son trip out of it, inviting Roger to come along for the game on May 21. Plus, that'd give him company while competing the next day across the street at the FanDuel Sports Network Live! bar.

"Don't worry about St. Louis," Scott said he told his wife, Kate, before leaving Garden City for Missouri. "This is a business trip. I'll come home with a vacation to Orlando for us!"

He quickly learned that the qualifiers are much more than just playing a few rounds of Pop-A-Shot. In fact, they're more like an endurance test to see how long you can remain focused against the competition.

Here's how they work: You have four hours to play as many times as you can. After the open shoot, they take the eight competitors with the highest scores and seed them into a playoff bracket.

Round by round, they whittle down those eight until a champion is crowned. The winner also secures a spot to play in the National Championship.

"That didn't go so well," Scott admitted. "I went in with the attitude of 'I'm awesome, and I'm going to kill everybody,' and I didn't even make the top eight."

It was an eye-opener for Scott, who learned that navigating the venue is just as important as swishing baskets.

Yes, he had four hours to shoot as many times as he wanted. The problem is that there were a reported 122 people competing. Essentially, you'd take your turn, walk to the back of the line and wait up to half an hour to play again.

All of that standing around took its toll on him, especially considering the casual Hey Dude shoes he sported didn't exactly provide the comfort and support needed to endure four hours of waiting.

What's more, he ended the night completely dehydrated. Pop-A-Shot might be a fun time at arcades and bars, but it's still an athletic endeavor. Playing four hours of anything requires you to refuel often to stay on top of your game.

As the night progressed, fatigue began to negatively impact his play.

"My dad was there with me, so I should have had him make sure I stayed hydrated," Scott said. "I should have had him go to the bar and grab me water the whole time."

While he left empty-handed, without a vacation with his wife to the National Championship in Orlando, he enjoyed the time he spent with his father and the fellow Pop-A-Shot enthusiasts he befriended.

And, hey, at least the Tigers beat the Cardinals, 5-1.

No Curse of the Billy Goat for Setzke

When Pop-A-Shot announced a qualifier for June 11 in Chicago, Scott started planning his trip immediately -- but not because he had a dying thirst to make up for falling short in St. Louis

"I just had so much fun there that I wanted to go to Chicago and have fun again," Scott said. "We're all just a bunch of nerds who are really into this."

That's not to say he didn't treat it like a business trip, though.

En route to Sluggers Bar, which is across the street from Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs, he stopped at a restaurant in northern Indiana that had Pop-A-Shot. While there, he got to break up the drive, stay loose by chatting with the locals and spent almost an hour practicing before getting back on the expressway.

After arriving 15 minutes before the open shoot started, he laced up his Mizuno running shoes, and then he made his way to the bar, slapping $20 on the counter to get the bartender's attention.

"I'm not a drinker, I'm not an eater," Scott said he told the bartender. "You're not going to make any money off of me, but throughtout the night I'm going to come up and ask for like 20 waters. So, I want to make sure you get paid for the work you're going to do tonight because I expect to come up here a lot."

For the rest of the night, Scott played relaxed.

He regrouped with some of the friends he made in St. Louis, including Morse-Karzen, last year's National Championship runner-up. Over the next four hours, their group occupied most of the top eight scores.

In the waning moments of the open shoot, Scott moved up from being the seventh seed to sixth.

That's right, this time he finally made it to bracket play, despite being in a field of almost 200 contestants.

"I stayed hyrdrated all night," Scott said. "Even though my legs were tired from standing, I was ready to go."

Scott swept his Round 1 opponent in back-to-back games of a best-of-three series.

In the semifinals, he dropped his opening game but won the next two convincingly, securing a 2-1 victory.

The championship had him square off against one of the best players in the country, who goes by the Pop-A-Shot online username KEVINC, the runner-up at the St. Louis qualifier, who had defeated Morse-Karzen in Round 1.

In a five-game finale, KEVINC stormed back to knot it at two games apiece, forcing a do-or-die Game 5, one that saw Scott make two last-second 3-pointers in Bonus Time to steal the tournament title with a 134-130 win.

"Going up against Kevin, whom I met in St. Louis, it was so much fun," Scott said. "I couldn't care less about winning or losing (in the tournament). I was just pumped to keep playing because we were talking a lot during the open shoot about how much fun the tournament was and how close his (previous championship round) was in St. Louis."

For the next hour or so, Scott was mobbed by the other contestants and grabbed for interviews, with his smile saying it all: He had finally earned that vacation with his wife to Orlando.

Back to his original battleground

Scott has been training daily for the National Championship ever since the Chicago event ended.

Part of his winnings at the qualifier included the company sending him an at-home version of Pop-A-Shot that he keeps in his garage. It's much better than the $80 knockoff he bought on Amazon earlier this year.

"I always say I'm going to go out there and play only five games," Scott said. "But an hour goes by, and I'm all sweaty and have to shower afterward."

But his training doesn't stop there.

While there are fewer than a dozen Elite Format versions in the world, Michigan happens to have two of them. One of them is at One Eyed Jacks in Shelby Township, which he's played on only once because it's about an hour north of his house. The other is at 3 Nicks Taproom in Southgate, about 30 minutes south of Garden City and only a few blocks from the YMCA in Wyandotte, where his love for Pop-A-Shot began over three decades ago.

"The guys that sit at the end of the bar there will watch me sometimes," Scott said. "They'll turn around and be like, 'This guy just made 14 shots in a row, what the hell!?'"

Scott trains there twice a week, stopping in on his way to a weekly darts tournament on Friday nights in the area. Then, he'll get there on Saturday or Sunday to play with James Isham, another Wyandotte native.

When he first started going there, he had to sneak in an air pump to inflate each ball to regulation size. He also had to ask the bar's owner to change the game's time limit from 95 seconds to the standard 55.

"Until we realized the time was wrong, we were shooting 260s and 270s," Scott said.

After Scott was interviewed for this story on July 28, he scored a career-best 150 points in front of a small group of men on their lunch break.

"I just have to get reps in there because that machine is so different compared to any other ones you'll play on," said Scott, who will go from the dark lights of a bikini bar to the bright cameras of an ESPN set this weekend.

He'll challenge himself against last year's National Championship winner and five other qualifiers. And taking that eighth spot? That's former NFL quarterback Brad Johnson, an avid Pop-A-Shot fan, who told the Tallahassee Democrat on July 30 that he attempts anywhere from 1,000 to 1,600 practice shots a day.

That's quite the competition for a 44-year-old dad from Garden City.

"I'm a regular guy, and I'm really just there to enjoy the experience," Scott said. "Chatting with Josh, last year's winner, he was saying it's going to be a fun experience. So, I don't care about winning or losing. I mean, I don't want to be dead last or get out in the first round. I'd like to enjoy it more. But I just know it's going to be a wild, fun experience."

Which is what Scott has learned about himself over the past year. It started with him on his couch, expecting to easily beat the opposition. After a humbling experience in St. Louis, he's placed an emphasis on camaraderie, and here he is, ready to play his favorite childhood game live on national TV amongst some of his new friends.

Brandon Folsom covers high school sports in metro Detroit for Hometown Life. Follow him on his new X.com account at @folsomwrites.