It’s not easy finding an upside to all of this, but while settling down on Sunday to watch the Johnsonville ACL Cornhole Champs: 2020 Kick-Off Battle on BT/ESPN, it couldn’t but strike you how it’s at least broadened our sporting horizons. And that’s a very good thing.
Before this, you’d most likely be all a-tingle at the same time on a Sunday in anticipation of, say, Burnley v Bournemouth, not even aware there was a sport called cornhole, never mind actually tuning in to the women’s doubles final from February’s season opener in Fort Lauderdale.
Cornhole, lest you also managed to arrive at this point in your life without ever hearing about it, is a sport where players take turns at throwing bags of corn kernels in to a hole in a wooden board. It is also known as dadhole, doghouse and bean in the hole in various parts of the United States and comes with a bunch of interesting lingo. A skunk, for example, is when you beat someone 21-0, while cornfusion is when the competitors disagree on what the actual score is. And if you throw your bag over a blocking bag in to the hole, that’s a Back Door Jumper Dirty Rollup.
Kick-Off battle
In many ways it would appear to be curling or bowls for Donald Trump supporters, the sense being that there wouldn’t be a single vote for Joe Biden among the crowd that turned up for the Kick-Off Battle at the Broward County Convention Center.
Two of the stars of the show were Christine Papcke and Megan Maupin (or Megan Maupin the Floor, as the commentator called her), their triumph in the doubles something of a surprise because they’re a new team following the shock retirement from the sport of Papcke’s usual partner, Stacia Pugh.
The commentator seemed reluctant to go in to Pugh’s reasons for walking away from cornhole, so The Google was required to solve the mystery.
After becoming a full-time professional cornholer in 2018 (“I was living the dream”), leaving behind a career in urban planning, Pugh enjoyed huge success. But she has packed it in for three reasons: (1) She was drinking too much wine while throwing her bags and it had given her “tummy issues”; (2) The prize money was rubbish; (3) She has fallen in love with another sport: Chess.
This is where Pugh upset the cornhole community by suggesting that you need a bigger brain to play chess. “Cornhole was never truly a great fit for me. I am a lot different than a lot of people in the community.... perhaps I’m a little more intellectual. Cornhole is more about muscle memory, chess is far deeper than that.”
That went down like a ton of corn kernel bags. It’s probably as well, then, that Pugh has no intention of returning to Cornhole, her focus now solely on chess. “If you chase two bunnies, both will get away,” as she said in her farewell statement.
Farewell
The concern about the new Papcke and Maupin partnership, we were told, was that “it lacked chemistry”, an observation that left you concluding you had a lot to learn about Cornhole, the need for chemistry while chucking bags in to a hole not immediately apparent.
But Papcke and Maupin prevailed and when a lady called Taylor interviewed them after, they were ecstatic. Papcke saluted Maupin but Maupin reserved her praise for a higher power. “I want to thank the Lord because He’s the reason I am here.”
With things being how they are, though, you sensed divine intervention would be needed for the next round of the Championship in Cleveland to take place. Breaking: “We have been regretfully informed by the Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Development Corporation that they will not be permitting the ACL to move forward with the next event due to public health and safety concerns surrounding the COVID-19 virus.”
Just as the Lord giveth us cornhole, He has taketh away.
