Marseilles native claims national Pop-A-Shot tourney title

When Josh Caputo was given a chance to take a shot at fame, he took it and made it.

He made lots and lots of them.

Caputo, a native of Marseilles, earlier this month captured first place in the National Pop-A-Shot Tournament, going undefeated in his head-to-head matches right through the championship that was broadcast on ESPN 2 from Rock Hill, South Carolina.

The tourney of Pop-A-Shot, the basketball arcade game that has players trying to make the most shots on a short, enclosed hoop in a specified amount of time, was the first-time effort by the Pop-A-Shot Enterprises out of Peoria in an effort to drum up interest in its new line of machines.

After an extensive screening process, Caputo, a 37-year-old married father of two now living in Montgomery, not only made the field but led the competition in three categories: making an amazing 68.9% of his shots, getting away 69 shots per game and averaging 120 points per game in the new scoring/bonus time format.

In the final, he posted a high score of 157 to defeat fellow finalist Brett Morse-Karzen of Glenview for the big prize: a large medallion with a thick Flavor Flav-style chain, a Stanley Cup-sized trophy that will have his name engraved the tournament kept, and a lot of recognition.

“It was so much fun,” Caputo said. “Pop-A-Shot, a small company of about 50 people, did a great job with it all, selecting these people and running the show. I have seven new friends (in the fellow finalists) plus the Pop-A-Shot family.

“If they had more tournaments like this up in Chicago or somewhere, where they could say come face the national champion and stuff like that, I would love that. I would be happy to promote it, it was that much fun.”

Caputo came about this opportunity by chance. He and his wife, Brianna, and their kids, Violet, 8, and Oliver, 6, were considering new games for their basement and decided on the Pop-A-Shot machine he’d wanted for some time. Family and friends chipped in and got it for his birthday.

Not long after it was delivered in May, he got an email announcing the national championship tournament and decided to try it.

“I guess I made a couple rounds of cuts, so the next one was to make a video,” Caputo said. “My buddy and I made one that turned out like that Michael Jordan documentary (’The Last Dance’). When we were editing it, we said, ‘This is kinda depressing,’ so we decided to make another based on MTV’s ‘Cribs.’ A lot of it was just to spice things up and some of it wasn’t true, it was just funny, so we submitted it.

“A few weeks later, they emailed again saying that everyone loved the video and that they wanted me in the next round. We did a 15-minute phone interview, just to see what my personality is like, and they said they’d let me know.

“Not even 10 minutes later, I got the email saying congrats, you’re one of the eight finalists. The rest is history.”

The competition took place in Rock Hill at Manchester Meadows, a venue where the finals of several other obscure sports were being filmed, like dodgeball, corn hole, darts, axe throwing and other “weird stuff,” Caputo said.

The games were 30 seconds long, the first 20 second each shot counting for two points, then three points over the last 10 seconds. If a competitor get at least 40 points, he gets 15 seconds of bonus time, all threes. The first round was the best of three games, the second a best of five and the finals a best of seven.

Caputo, whose strategy was to be a “swisher,” not a “banker,” lived up to his top seed by breezing through the first two rounds, then running away with the first three games of the final against Morse-Karzen.

In the final game, Caputo took with with a last-second bullseye to become the event’s first champ.

“I was very confident at first, but then I was totally nervous at first because I’d never been on TV before,” Caputo said. “But once I got used to the (new prototype) machines and found a rhythm, I was actually laser-focused. I don’t remember shooting. It was a total blur, like I totally blocked it out, so it was kinda surreal … Watching on Youtube now, it’s kinda fun. We couldn’t hear the commentators, but they said nice things about me.

“We watched darts and the winner got $12,000, so we hoped for something like that, but it wasn’t. After ours, we were watching others and the cameras went to me and the crowd chanted my name.”

Caputo added the plan is to have much more competition a year from now.

“I understand the long-term plan to have tournaments all over the country, with a national data base to draw from,” Caputo said. “If that happens, I hope defending might be in the cards a year from now. We’ll see.”