08/10/2026
THE TACTICAL GAMES — SIG SAUER ACADEMY | EPPING, NH 🇺🇸
What. A. Weekend.
This past weekend, Pat Kimball and I took on The Tactical Games Team Event at the SIG SAUER Academy in Epping, New Hampshire.
For anyone who isn't familiar with The Tactical Games, it's hard to fully explain what you're signing up for until you experience it firsthand. It's essentially the collision of functional fitness and precision shooting under physical stress. Sprinting, carrying weight, moving through obstacles, grinding through physical work, and then immediately being expected to slow everything down, control your breathing, pick up a r***e or pistol, and make accurate shots.
The SIG Team Event took that another step further. It was a two-person team competition consisting of multiple stages across two days, designed to test physical endurance, shooting ability, communication, coordination, problem-solving, and your ability to perform when you're smoked.
And "smoked" is probably putting it lightly.
There were moments this weekend where the body wanted to quit, the lungs were burning, the heart rate was through the roof, and you still had work left to do. Then you had to get behind the gun, control all of that chaos, and perform.
We had some great performances that we're extremely proud of.
We also had some not-so-great performances.
That's competition.
There were stages where everything seemed to click — communication was good, movement felt good, shots were there, and we executed the plan.
Then there were stages that exposed weaknesses immediately. Mistakes were made. Plans didn't work exactly how we envisioned them. Shots were missed. Time was left on the table.
But that's probably the most valuable part of competing.
You don't travel all the way to New Hampshire and put yourself through something like this just to prove what you're already good at. You go to find out where you're weak.
And we definitely came home with a list. 😂
More importantly, we came home knowing exactly what we need to work on.
One of my biggest takeaways from the entire weekend wasn't even a score or a finish.
It was the people.
The camaraderie surrounding The Tactical Games is something different. You're technically competing against the people around you, but everyone understands what everyone else is going through. You're suffering together, pushing each other, talking strategy, laughing about mistakes, congratulating great performances and watching people continue grinding when they're completely exhausted.
Military, law enforcement, first responders and civilians all sharing the same range and testing themselves against the same clock.
That's a pretty damn cool environment to be part of.
And getting to do it alongside Pat made the experience even better.
Two guys with different strengths, different backgrounds and different experiences having to figure out how to put it all together as a team when the clock starts.
Sometimes we nailed it.
Sometimes we absolutely didn't.
But we never stopped working.
We learned a ton about pacing, communication, shooting under fatigue, stage planning, transitions, managing mistakes and, probably most importantly, ourselves.
The SIG SAUER Academy was an incredible place to experience our first team event as well — more than 140 acres of ranges and tactical training areas in Epping, New Hampshire.
We walked into this weekend wanting to compete hard and see where we stacked up.
We walked away tired, sore, humbled, motivated and hungry to get better.
There are plenty of things we would change if we could run certain stages again.
That's exactly why we'll be back.
The training starts again with a much clearer picture of what needs work, and we're already looking forward to putting those lessons to use at future Tactical Games team events.
Great performances.
Bad performances.
Lessons learned.
New friends.
A lot of suffering.
A lot of laughs.
And one hell of an experience.
Until the next one. 🇺🇸🤘
Scafetta & Kimball — we'll be back.
