Although he doesn’t turn 14 until this Saturday, Waterloo’s Ryan Traiteur is already ranked among the top in his sport.

The young cornhole competitor certainly boosted his profile by capturing the Pro Shootout Singles and Pro National Singles titles at the American Cornhole League Pro Bag Brawl in Milwaukee this past weekend. 

The Pro National Singles event aired nationally on ESPN2.

Traiteur advanced to the Bag Brawl finals following a successful showing in Minneapolis just a few weeks prior.

With his victory, Traiteur became the youngest ever to win a pro national singles title in the sport.

In the final of that event, Traiteur trailed 14-0 in a match that sees a winner at 21, only to rally and secure victory.

“They’re starting to call him ‘The Comeback Kid,’” said Ryan’s mother Kelly Traiteur. “He has done that a few times already. Ryan seems to thrive in those situations.”

Ryan is just about to begin his freshman year at Waterloo High School this fall but is amazingly ranked No. 2 in the world in cornhole. He is ranked just behind Jeremiah Ellis of Ohio, who is in his early 30s.

As a member of the ACL pro circuit, cornhole players must compete in three of the four sanctioned national tournaments each year.

“These players are the best of the best in this sport,” his mother said.

Traiteur plans to compete in all four tourneys, the next beginning July 3 in Valley Forge, Pa. If he fares well at that tournament, Traiteur would compete in the finals taking place in Ohio during mid-July.

Traiteur’s first experience with cornhole came from throwing bean bags as a small backyard lawn game alongside his brother Mason.

“Then when COVID hit, there wasn’t a whole lot to do, so they would go down to the basement with my husband and they would practice and practice,” his mother told the Republic-Times in an article last year.

Traiteur competed in the ACL World Championships last year in Rock Hill, S.C., where he not only made his debut on ESPN but managed to come in second in his finals bracket. That’s when Traiteur was awarded professional status. 

It requires a lot of practice and tons of travel for he and his family, but Traiteur is driven to attain top status. 

The sport of cornhole has certainly blossomed in recent years. 

Cornhole – also known regionally as or bags – is a game in which players or take turns throwing fabric bean bags at an inclined board with a hole in its far end. The goal of the game is to score points by either landing a bag on the board (one point) or putting a bag through the hole (three points).

The game was first described in Heyliger de Windt’s 1883 patent for “Parlor Quoits,” which displays most of the features of modern cornhole but uses a square hole.

In September 1974, Popular Mechanics magazine published an article about a similar game called “bean-bag bull’s-eye.” 

In the Chicago area, a similar game is referred to as “bags” but uses rectangular bags. The game spread in Chicago and the northwest region of Indiana in the late 1970s and early 1980s, perhaps due to the Popular Mechanics article. 

Cornhole as it is now known originated and gained popularity in Cincinnati in the 1980s and spread to surrounding areas of Kentucky and Indiana.

For more on the American Cornhole League, visit iplaycornhole.com.