Kuna, ID Outdoor Activities

When recent budget cuts forced Treasure Valley to implement a pay-to-play program for high-school athletics, Jonathan Gonzales, Jeff Allen, Steven Caporale and Brett Hughes banded together to help aspiring athletes in need. Their donation-driven Farm Man Challenge tests competitors with lengthy races and farm-based obstacle courses while raising several thousand dollars each year to, according to KTVB, directly support high-school athletic programs. The annual event’s creators constantly tweak its matches, coaxing participants through new variations of multi-mile runs, corn-maze and obstacle navigation, and limbo contests against scarecrows. While only one male and one female finisher receive the honors of FarmMan and FarmWoman annually, each racer earns the ability to select the high school to which they donate.

As a PGA-certified pro, Jeff Thomsen's distinguished golf career began decades ago, when the 16-year-old Thomsen swung his way to the Idaho State Amateur championship, becoming the youngest player ever to earn that rarefied distinction. His early success would pave the cart path to a long career that included 55 PGA Tour events, participation in four major championships, multiple tournament victories, and once saving a course-side community from a feral golf cart. Today, Jeff showers pupils with golf wisdom culled from both his 35-year competitive career and a certification from the Nicklaus/Flick Golf School. The passionate pedagogue helps players sharpen their game, lengthen their drives, and fold scorecards into paper cranes with hands-on, comprehensive lessons conducted at multiple courses throughout the hills of Treasure Valley.

On the outdoor tactical playing field at True Paintball Adventure Park, players skulk behind burned-out cars and plan evasive routes to safety while under fire from paint-splattering combatants. That’s at just one of the facility’s outdoor fields. There’s also a hyperball field peppered with plastic barrels. Indoors, teams take to towers and take cover behind wooden sheds set up under a weather-neutralizing roof and overhead lighting. It’s an ideal spot for creating memorable birthdays, bachelor parties, corporate events, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings.