Backboard. Blocker. Push bag. Airmail.

These are all part of the encyclopedia of terms thrown around by the best cornhole players in the world — amateur and professional alike. 

Rex Putnam High School senior Hayden Gonzales is one of them, and next year he’ll head to Winthrop University in South Carolina on  an athletic scholarship to play cornhole in college. 

Cornhole is a popular backyard field game where two players, or two teams of two players, toss large bean bags toward a wooden board 27 feet away. The goal is to get all of your bags into the large hole located at the top of the board or land your bag on the board, with different points awarded depending on the bag’s placement .   

“During quarantine, there wasn’t really much going on and I was just throwing with my dad and doing online tournaments. And then quarantine ended, and then I started going to actual tournaments and realizing that I can compete with the best,” said Gonzalez. “The more I played, the better I was getting.” 

And his timing was fortuitous, as cornhole has seen a rise in popularity in recent years and is now televised on ESPN+. Gonzales follows in the footsteps of Jaxson Remmick and Gavin Hamann — Colorado students who were the first to receive cornhole scholarships from Winthrop in 2024.

Gonzales is still technically an amateur player, but that’s just so he can be eligible for a college scholarship. As a junior player, he can still compete in regional and national tournaments and win prize money. 

“Locally, it’s not as competitive; it can be. I still try and have fun, because the whole point of playing is to have fun. When I travel, though, it’s definitely a lot more competitive, because it’s a lot more important … money wise or ranking wise,” said Gonzales.  

Last April, Hayden was ranked in the top five for the entire country and he is currently the top- ranked player in Oregon, despite being at least a decade younger than the second-ranked pro player. 

His dad Michael compared tournament cornhole to tennis, with three levels: local, regional and open. The open level is for the best players, which means that Michael and Hayden have traveled all over the country so he can play ranked cornhole.  

“The real interesting thing about cornhole is it doesn’t take athleticism, or any certain type of fitness level, whereas almost any other sport does,” said Michael Gonzales. “So cornhole is crazy because you will have 12-year-old kids who become really good and they compete with 45-year-old men. That  just doesn’t happen in other sports.” 

Competitive cornhole is regulated by the American Cornhole League, which maintains the same rules for adult and junior players. Michael Gonzales serves as the national director of support for the league and brought that passion for the game to his son, especially when Hayden began playing at a high level at tournaments. 

As his ranking among ACL players grew, so did the size of the tournaments that Hayden and Michael attended. 

“I kind of have a higher seed, so there’s usually a lot of downtime. If you go 3-0, you’re waiting a good amount of time because those (games) are on ESPN+ or YouTube,” said Gonzales. “The bracket definitely gets harder because your first games are against lower seeds and then it turns into the best of the best in those (later) games — they usually pause and put them on TV and whatnot.” 

According to Gonzales, his friends at school don’t find it strange that he’s competing in high level cornhole. Not anymore, at least.

“Now, I’ve been playing for a while, so they’re not really surprised. But when I meet new people, they definitely are surprised,” said Gonzales. 

At Winthrop University, Gonzales is looking forward to the higher level of competition on the East Coast and said that he’s already competed with most of his future teammates. 

“Since cornhole is not a very big thing, the college I’m going to has all the best players. They’re the national champions, they’ve won pretty much every year so far. So I think that was probably a pretty big pitch,” said Gonzales. 

The chance to attend a Division I school on nearly a full scholarship is unique for Gonzales and something that he and his family are grateful for.

“I definitely think it’s growing; the pool of players is getting a lot more talented as it keeps growing,” said Gonzales.