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This post is sponsored by MedCity News.

Competition in the medical industry is nothing new. But usually, the nurses and scientists don’t have bags of feed corn in their hands. Come Aug. 19, they will.

It’s time for the Second Annual MedCity News Medical Cornhole Tournament. Cornhole,known as beanbag toss outside of Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky, is almost a national backyard pastime for residents in Ohio — including the local medical industry.

The defending champions are Cleveland Clinic Innovations, which beat out Cleveland’s University Hospitals in the finals along with 31 other teams. Their winnings: a cornhole set, a $100 catering gift certificate and the coveted title of MedCity News Medical Cornhole Tournament champions. The giant cornhole tournament bracket, at last check, remains in the office of Peter O’Neill, a senior commercialization officer and one half of Cleveland Clinic’s cornhole team. But expect even bigger honors for winning this year’s tournament.

This year’s cornhole tournament and picnic starts at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 19 at Gateway Plaza in Cleveland between Progressive Field and Quicken Loans Arena. You’ll get a little time to size up the competition before the games begin at 5 p.m.

You can begin to registered through Brown Paper Tickets. If you have any questions, please contact MedCity News. We’ll continue to post updates up until the tournament.

We’re looking for people in the medical industry to come out and show off their cornhole skills. Take note, no robotic-assisted mechanisms will be allowed. That means you, surgeons. This is just you and that lowly bag of corn. But if you can loft it into the hole in the board, your teammates will cheer as if you’ve just delivered twins.

We are invoking a small ($25/team) registration fee, just to keep things legit and make sure everyone shows up. But it’s free to attend.

We are also offering corporate sponsorship for the event. Thanks already to Downtown Cleveland Alliance, Thunder::Tech and StudioThink for their support. It’s an opportunity for your company to get in front of the region’s leading hospitals and medical companies, among others.

We’ll play, rain or shine. Yeah, we take it that seriously.

More than 100 people took part in the fun in 2009. They came from hospitals, medical manufacturers, insurers and other medically related organizations, such as: Ohio State Medical Association, University Hospitals, Steris Corp., MetroHealth Medical Center, Invacare, BioEnterprise and Medical Mutual. Did we mention that there are some great networking opportunities at an event like this?

And this year, we’re kicking the competition up a notch by opening it up to people in the Minneapolis-area medical industry as well. It’s only fair, since we have an office there now. And, there will be beverages for sale this time that may make the tournament a little more interesting.

Here’s a video from last year’s tournament.