This weekend Wichita State University hosted the 2021 American Cornhole League Cornhole Mania inside Charles Koch Arena and the Heskett Center. The event took place over three days and featured ACL professionals from across the country. 

Tournament play was open to the public inside Koch Arena but attendance was limited to 2,000 spectators. 

Trey Ryder serves as the Chief Marketing Officer for the ACL and is an analyst for the league’s broadcasts on ESPN. Ryder said that the event in Wichita was a successful one. 

“It’s pretty high intensity,” Ryder said. “We only have four of our national events leading up to world championships. So, all of our ACL pros and professional players travel to the events, it’s always high stakes, a very intense environment. But there’s also a good amount of fun to be had, it is cornhole. It’s been a fun weekend, great balance of fun and intensity.”

Ryder said that these types of events are very helpful in growing the sport to a larger audience. 

“A lot of times it motivates people to want to get playing and plugged into our local leagues and get plugged into our director network,” Ryder said. “I think they’re super important and to travel somewhere. We love to travel to different locations and working with our local outreach within our cornhole community.”

Ryder said that the sport has recently turned a corner as in 2016, the league inked a deal with ESPN to broadcast their events and championships. Ryder now serves as an analyst on the broadcasts and said that has allowed the sport to grow, as a result. 

“That was our first big turning point, being able to secure that kind of broadcast deal,” Ryder said. “Once we were able to do that, we saw the first explosion in our sport and the more that we’re on there, the more we’re reaching those new audiences. Once we grab someone that’s a new audience listener and convert them to a cornhole diehard, it really adds legitimacy to our sport and bring more people in.”

After putting on a successful event in Wichita this weekend, Ryder said that the league could look to return to the city sometime in the future. 

The events this weekend were limited because of COVID-19 precautions, but Ryder said that the fan attendance could be much different on a return trip.

“I think we were really happy with how things were in Wichita and I think in a non-COVID world being in Charles Koch Arena would fill out the stands the way the Shockers do when they have a home basketball game,” Ryder said. “I think it’d be a really cool atmosphere, we were kind of limited to the amount of people we could have from a spectator perspective.”