IATC 2026: The Good, The Bad, The Poutine.

Dear reader, where to even start. IATC 2026 was, for me, the largest series of axe throwing days I’ve experienced. I flew up on Tuesday and started watching/talking/covering/not sleeping in earnest on Wednesday. Meaning I experienced the glory of our sport for five days. Five days!

This post isn’t gonna be the in-depth, photo-rich one you should expect from me – more of a general reader’s digest version of what you can expect over the next few posts. Do you understand what I’m writing? Do you get it? I’m spilling with thoughts and need to start organizing them, but I also have set up an expectation of publishing every Tuesday and Thursday, and I simply cannot break that schedule. It makes me feel so bad when I do.

First, the Good

Friends. I mean that both as an introduction to this section and as one of the good things. I saw so many of my friends at IATC this year, traveled with my partner and best friend, and had the joy of (at least from Fri-Sun) hang out with a strong crew of Meadery throwers. It was such a gift.

I think that’s an inherent quality of the IATC, of course, and so is meeting so many people who are likewise little freaks (like me) and are sweet pahtooties. Because Mollie was handling all of the photo work, I was free to, you know, actually interact with people and take in everything – and it was pretty great. Now, I don’t want you to think that IATC is the very best experience in axe throwing around (I’ve had more fun/meaningful experiences at Choptober and at the US Open and such), but it’s…I dunno…It’s unique, and cool as hell.

My own throwing. I only competed in IATC Day 2, and lost both of my matches. But wait: if you recall from my past “what I’m hoping to accomplish” post, I had the goal of winning one, singular round of one of my two expected matches.

Dear reader, I won, like, at least 4 of them. And it felt ah-maz-inggg. In truth, I think a big part of my much-better performance was due to being real loosey-goosey about it. I was intentionally having fun, and the two people I competed against (Brycie and Peasooo) were fun and easy going, too. In fact, I managed to tie a round with a Premier Clutch after jokingly saying “no problem, watch this,” and I’ve been riding that high for days, now.

The achievements of dear sweetheart humans. Adeline made history. Bows earned the LAFACE community award. So many throwers I care about did so well. It makes my heart glow.

I didn’t get overloaded with interactions, and functioned like a real person most of the time. I don’t know if I’m just building up my skin, or people are just aware because I write about it a lot, or what, but I didn’t have a social-anxiety freak out. Not even once. I talked to so many people and it was like, chill. Sure, I hid and cried a few times out of gratefulness, but that’s very different than needing to run away and hide for an hour. Maybe it’s because I was surrounded by friends, maybe it’s because Mollie was there to ground me – who knows. But it was nice to avoid the blight of imposter syndrome.

Next, the bad

A lot of the bad things deserve their own article, but I think it’ll become obvious as I go through them which ones fall into that category.

The traffic. I mean, no surprise, but holy hell. How does anyone live in Toronto and get anywhere. I’m not gonna belabor this, but sheesh.

Seeing anything during matches. I’m a little guy. A lot of what I was able to see was elbows and shoulders. Not a huge deal, and honestly a lot of people were kind enough to let me get in front of them because, let’s be honest, they could use my shoulders to hold drinks and still see everything.

Stormy’s exit from IATC/IATF. No jokes to make about this one. Kristen wrote a post about it on her own Facebook page if you want the details, and I have more to say about it, but I don’t wanna center myself trying to summarize.

I’ll say this: it’s embarrassing it happened at all, deeply against the best parts of what the IATF (as a community) can be, and shows the enormous distance the IATF (as an organization), us as a community, and us as humans have to go before we’re creating better/safer places for throwers, espesh those throwers who aren’t in the majority.

Ohhhh I just got so angry writing that paragraph. I’m gonna try to recover into the next section but honestly, it’s gonna be a rough transition.

Finally, the Poutine

Yup, that felt wrong.

By “poutine” I do mean everything else around IATC 2026. The food was great (4 times I ate poutine, btw), the drinks were fun. I played Farkle with my AirBnB mates late into the night on Saturday and man, that game always slaps.

I also got a lot of ideas for future content based on conversations and such. I didn’t do as many interviews as I was expecting, but that’s okay. I lined up a few for the future, and gathered up interesting thoughts/ideas/connections that I wouldn’t have gotten any other way, I think.

I will also admit.

Dear reader. Listen.

I’ll admit I did get an axe. A big one. But it’s so well made, supported the Gal-Lee fund, and felt so right in my mitts. But. BUUUTTTT I didn’t buy any other axes, and that’s pretty damn good.

Anyway, so much more coming soon, but I didn’t want to stay radio silent for very long. I’m so tired and I’m gonna go back to sleep, now. Thanks to everyone who said hi, talked about the blog with me, and gave me cute things to take home to remember the experience. Yer the best.