Playing cornhole can now get you a college scholarship. A coach tells you how

NPR’s Scott Simon asks Dusty Thompson, coach of the Winthrop University Eagles cornhole team, about scholarships for team athletes.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There’s a new kind of student athlete in the making. Winthrop University in South Carolina announced this week it’s awarding two scholarships to a couple of Colorado teenagers to play cornhole for the next school year. Cornhole? Yeah, the beanbag-tossing game. It’s a historic time for the sport and for Dusty Thompson, who coaches the Winthrop University Eagles cornhole team. He joins us now. Coach, thanks very much for being with us.

DUSTY THOMPSON: Thank you for having me.

SIMON: What makes a great cornhole player?

THOMPSON: Somebody who’s been around the game a long time, knows the game, knows the mental side of it ’cause it’s not just about putting every bag in the hole. There’s a lot of players that make this a lot more difficult to do that. So it can be a mental game in the long run. Some games can go 20 or 30 minutes, and some games can go five minutes. So a 20 or 30-minute game can mentally exhaust you.

SIMON: Coach Thompson, I say this with respect, but there are people who don’t understand why cornhole should be considered a sport, or even why somebody would get mentally exhausted after half an hour.

THOMPSON: I get it. I completely get it. I hear it all the time. But the same thing goes for when baseball started. I mean, somebody picked up a stick, probably a broomstick, I don’t know, maybe hit a rock and look what they turned it into. And it’s an amazing sport now. The same thing with basketball – I believe it started with a peach basket. It started somewhere. What’s wrong with cornhole starting, you know? Why not get it in college? Give these kids a chance to get a college degree that might not have had a chance, or give them a little bit of help through college for being such a good player. I think it’s great. I mean, it’s a great way for these kids to…