Cheyenne Bubenheim is a professional cornhole player from Plant City, joining the American Cornhole League in 2019.
A 2018 graduate of Durant High School, Bubenheim began taking classes to earn her Real Estate License before changing paths with the opportunity to participate in the ACL as a full-time athlete.
Her introduction to cornhole began just as it does for many others, playing with family around gatherings and holidays, but she would also tag along as her dad and uncle played in cornhole competitions on Friday nights at Uncle Mike’s Smokehouse off of State Road 60 in Plant City, alongside family friends. At first Bubenheim said that she wouldn’t play because with the tournaments being a blind draw, meaning you didn’t know who your partner would be, she didn’t want to drag anyone down because she didn’t play as much at the time. But by naturally finding herself around cornhole tournaments, she began playing more in between the tournament rounds and practicing with her dad.
As her cornhole skills began to sharpen, Bubenheim and her family played with a group that was part of a league that’s now become the ACL. She began attending tournaments and accumulating points until her point total rose to the point where she qualified for the professional division in 2019. In the years since, Bubenheim has become one of the most accomplished cornhole players in the world with a number of ACL victories before becoming the first woman to reach a pro singles final in 2021. The next year she followed that accomplishment with a 2022 Women’s Singles World Championship, a 2022 Women’s Doubles World Championship and the 2022 ACL Woman of the Year award — given to the top-ranked woman in the ACL.
“Cornhole really wasn’t that big, even when I turned pro, but now cornhole’s my full-time job. It’s grown so much,” Bubenheim said. “When I first made it into the pro division it was a big deal but then a couple of years ago I made history as the first woman to ever make it to a pro singles final. In pro singles you’ve got men and women together and I became the first woman to make it to pro singles final so that’s really what pushed me to be able to get some bigger sponsors and actually make it my full-time job.”
With the help of those sponsors — including cornhole bag company AllCornHole, a roofing and apparel company AAR in North Carolina and Alan’s Air Conditioning in Plant City — she now travels throughout the country most weekends for tournaments as part of the ACL’s Pro Series, consisting of an annual season that runs from October to the following August. The Pro Series includes four Pro Nationals tournaments, eight Pro Shootout tournaments, the ACL World Championships and several optional open tournaments. In the ACL Shootout Series, event victories will automatically qualify the winners for the ACL Pro Shootout Championship.
Bubenheim will make her way to Portland this upcoming weekend for the ACL Bag Brawl, the third Pro Nationals Tournament of the 2022-2023 season, with the ACL Final Chase in Detroit to follow from June 30 to July 2 and both the ACL Pro Shootout Championship and the ACL World Championships taking place in Rock Hill, South Carolina from July 29 to August 6.
“I just practice every day with my husband and we play together and he really pushed me to be more confident and do more with the sport,” Bubenheim said of her journey through the ACL with the support of her husband Brandon. “I enjoyed playing and traveling and doing that stuff but I really don’t think that I’d be in the spot that I am now without him. It all just all kind of happened.”