Bagging a national title

Earlier this month, a recent grad from Southwest Iowa was featured on ESPN winning a national title. The competition? Cornhole.

A 2025 Mount Ayr graduate, Dylan Graham was part of a four-person team from South Carolina’s Winthrop University that took first in the American Cornhole League National College Cornhole Championship. Based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the championship hosts singles, doubles and team play.

“Singles is just you versus everyone in college singles. Our college doubles is you and a partner. My partner was Hayden Gonzales, and we did OK,” Graham said. “The team event is four people on a team per college. Winthrop entered three different teams in the college teams event, and my team made it to the championship, and so did another Winthrop team as well.”

After multiple rounds of bracket play, Graham’s team ended up in the finals, playing against his own teammates for the championship title.

But how does a young man from Southwest Iowa become a national champion in cornhole?

While many Midwestern kids grow up playing the game at backyard barbecues, Graham said his first ever game of cornhole was a bit later in life.

“My first time ever playing was at my uncle’s house at an Iowa State versus Iowa football game when I was probably a freshman or eighth grader,” Graham said. “We just were playing for fun but I noticed I was decent at it, so I started playing with some of my friends at some of the summer tournaments around Mount Ayr.”

The more tournaments he played, the further he was willing to travel for play. After a year or two of summer tournaments, Graham began playing in American Cornhole League tournaments.

“They have some really big ones in Kansas City and Omaha, and then they have some up in Des Moines,” Graham said. “At first I wasn’t doing the greatest, but it wasn’t terrible, so I just kept practicing to where I was good enough that I could compete at that level.”

Around this time, two exciting things happened. The ACL offered Graham a pro card, which would make him an ACL official professional cornhole player. The pro designation allows players to compete in elite-level tournaments and features more than double the prize money for signature events. Out of an active player base of more than 100,000, in the 2025-26 season, there were 695 pro spots available.

However, at the same time he earned his pro card, Dusty Thompson from Winthrop University reached out to recruit Graham to the college team. ACL college players cannot be ACL pros simultaneously, so Graham had to make a decision.

“I had started making quite a bit of money playing, but the scholarship I got for this was just too good to turn down. I thought it would be a good experience for me,” Graham said.

Though turning down the pro card was hard, he hopes to eventually earn that title again. Graham instead committed to Winthrop, joining the cornhole team there and studying business administration. Though it’s his first year in college, Graham is academically a sophomore, meaning he has only two seasons left.

Like any college athlete, Graham is constantly practicing. However, college-level cornhole practice looks a little different than one might expect.

“Once your bag spin is pretty good, you’re able to compete at the highest level, so then it’s a really mental sport. For our practices, they look a lot like trying to mimic high-pressure situations,” Graham said. “A lot of times we just play tournaments and our coach will make it fun by making a reward for something. Another thing we’ve also done this year is, [Thompson] had us each read some mental training books, and that really helped me a lot.”

It’s this focus and mental fortitude that differentiates competitive cornhole from a neighbor’s backyard game.

“With a lot of backyard games, if you hit a good shot, you’re excited. This is more, you have to hit the shot or you’re going to lose. It’s a lot more focused and serious. You have players wearing headphones. It gets really intense,” Graham said. “There was this 9-year-old who was just unreal. He made 80 in a row the other weekend. You just have to be willing to play long matches and stay focused for a long time.”

With about 50 colleges participating in the ACL, Winthrop is one of the top institutions to play for. When it finally came to the national championships, Winthrop’s chances were looking good. Of the three competitions - singles, doubles and team - two were taken by Winthrop.

Alongside Graham’s team, partners Gavin Hamann and Jaxson Remmick won the doubles title. Alex Weaver from Adrian College took the singles title, the first for the Michigan-based school.

Many of the top performers were from Winthrop.

“We got the two-seed going into the bracket, and the other Winthrop team on the other side that we were worried about got the one-seed, so basically we had a pretty good route to the finals,” Graham said.

Playing against his own teammates in the championships helped ease the pressure, despite it being the only match he played shown on ESPN.

“There’s more pressure to get [to the championships],” Graham said. “Once you get on TV, you’re almost more relaxed because this is the exciting part and now you just get to go out and show what you can do. Obviously we were playing Winthrop versus Winthrop, so either way it was good for our team. There wasn’t really a loser on whoever won.”

Even before gaining the win, Graham said the atmosphere in the final game was fun.

“There was music going on and a lot of people around,” Graham said. It’s been a great experience for me."

Though many will continue to think of cornhole as a backyard summer game, Graham said those who are interested in playing at a higher level should check out the app Scoreholio.

“It will show all the tournaments within the radius that you set it to,” Graham said. “Most everyone who plays in Iowa and even around here uses Scoreholio and you can set it to how far you’re willing to travel. I’ll go up to 50 or 100 miles usually and it will show all the tournaments for that week or so.”

From small games in Mount Ayr to winning a national title, Graham has had the chance to travel the country doing something he loves. And only in his first year at Winthrop, he has plenty of time for more.

“The experiences I’ve got traveling has definitely grown me as a person and I’ll never forget it,” Graham said. “And big shoutout to Furgy’s Carpet, Capitol City Baggers and Underworld Cornhole. Those guys have really helped me out a lot.”