Kings of Cornhole rest their crowns in Alexandria

BY KENTON HORNBECK | LINK nky REPORTER

Bret Guy's eyes were locked in on the ground. His hands juggled the beanbag up and down, feeling the individual resin pellets through the fabric with his fingertips. He took three steps forward and adjusted his footing.

Similar to a major league hitter's routine before stepping into the batter’s box, Bret’s mannerisms resembled that of a seasoned veteran with experience operating in the clutch.

"It was nothing but pure adrenaline at that point," Bret said.

Anxiously watching in the crowd is Matt Guy, widely considered to be the greatest cornhole player of all time. Some people refer to him as the GOAT of the sport, a colloquialism meaning 'greatest of all-time.' For Bret, the GOAT goes by another name: Dad.

"This slide shot is for the win for Bret Guy and Erick Davis to win their second straight Pro Shootout Championship in doubles," proclaimed the CBS Sports play-by-play broadcaster.

Bret’s gaze shifted from the ground to the opposite board, locking his eyes onto the target. His right arm swayed backward, then forward, launching the beanbag into the air.

An $100,000 purse was on the line. At the time, it was the largest prize in the history of cornhole. Bret said he believes a championship cornhole purse could reach up to $1 million in the future.

Days earlier, Bret and Matt boarded a plane from CVG to Los Angeles after the completion of their work week. They both work for Stigler Supply Company, a custodial supply company in Cincinnati. Matt works as a sales representative while Bret is his assistant. Both are residents of Alexandria.

Like Babe Ruth in the Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, Bret Guy called his shot. The bean bag was on its way, but Bret knew his shot was going in.

He busted out a premature “let’s go” as the beanbag hit the board, sliding over the Johnsonville Brats logo and disappearing into the hole.

He immediately shed his stoic competitive persona, getting louder in his celebration. Several aggressive first pumps were thrown, like Tiger Woods winning the 2005 Masters.

For Matt, watching his son win was a full-circle moment. His own father, Art Guy, was a horseshoes enthusiast.

"I was crying like a baby," he confessed.

He told LINK nky that he traveled around the Midwest with his father for 27 years.

“It was me and my Dad, and we just traveled basically around the Midwest pitching in horseshoe tournaments,” he said. “I got like sixth in the world, so I was pretty good at horseshoe pitching at the time.”

It was 1995 when Matt first discovered cornhole at a party. He took to the game instantly, and his muscle memory from years of pitching horseshoes made for a seamless transition.

In 2000, Matt was driving a bread route for Butternut in Cincinnati when he passed by the Western Hills Sports Mall. He noticed a sign that piqued his interest. Curious, he went in and picked up a flier advertising a cornhole tournament.

Matt contacted his brother to be his partner. That weekend, they won two matches, but also lost two. Although his first tournament finish wasn’t as illustrious as the ones that would follow, he was hooked.

“I started looking for tournaments after that, and sure enough, I started finding them,” Matt said. “Before you know it, I was just running around Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Cleveland winning money at tournaments.”

In the early 2000s, the sport of cornhole was more rudimentary.

There was little institutional infrastructure, and the sport lacked a strong governing body. Tournaments were arranged by individuals or small groups of people. The prize money was often small, with first place purses topping out at $200 to $300, according to Matt.

In many ways, Matt is a pioneer within the sport. He was able to watch his professional career blossom alongside the American Cornhole Organization. Founded in 2005 and based in Milford, Ohio, the ACO is one of the two largest professional cornhole leagues in the United States.

Bret, too, can lay claim to the pioneer moniker. Both Matt and Bret participated in the first ACO Cornhole World Championship, which in Bret’s eyes, makes them “the last OGs of cornhole.”

While Bret may refer to them as OGs, they also share another title: kings. More specifically, Kings of Cornhole.

In 2006, King of Cornhole founder Matthew Grey and his business partner Doug Hopkins created the “King of Cornhole” television show. The show was inspired by the “King of TV Bowling” which aired from 1964 to 2009. Both Gray and Hopkins partnered with the ACO to create the first-ever cornhole show in television history.

Matt went on to win the first two installments of the television series, cementing him as an early face of the sport. The world title winner of the ACO is also referred to as '”The King of Cornhole.”

So what makes Matt the GOAT? For starters, Matt won five straight ACO World Championships from 2006 to 2010. After a dry spell, Matt went on to reclaim the ACO world title three more times in 2015, 2016 and 2019.

Bret has his own ACO World Championship title, taking home the hardware in 2014 in front of a friendly home crowd at Turfway Park in Florence. That year, the ACO World Championships were broadcast on ESPN. It was also featured on the network's Wider World of Sports, hosted by former SportsCenter anchor Kenny Mayne.

Mayne referred to Bret as “Heir to the Cornhole Throne.” After he secured the championship, Bret told Mayne he was going to cel- ebrate his victory by eating at the Florence Red Lobster.

The duo has since departed the ACO. Both Matt and Bret now compete in the American Cornhole League which was founded in 2015.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, ESPN aired the ACL for six straight weeks in order to fill timeslot vacancies caused by the in-season suspension of professional sports leagues like the NBA and MLB. It was this run on ESPN that helped the ACL grow feverishly, setting the organization up with a broadcasting rights deal with CBS Sports. The league is seen as a direct competitor to the ACO.

Besides competing on television, Matt’s and Bret's professional cornhole careers have opened them up to opportunities they could have never expected. Cornhole allowed Matt to cross paths with former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Doug Flutie.

The ACL puts on an event called Superhole which pits pairs of celebrities and professional cornholers against each other in a tournament. Matt was paired with Flutie.

"I got a call saying, 'Hey, so apparently Doug' s really competitive and he doesn't really play cornhole that much so he wants to know if you'll fly down to Florida and train him before the tournament," said Matt.

It was an easy 'yes' for Matt who was able to coach Flutie in the days leading up to the tournament. For a beginner like Flutie, having the GOAT teach you how to play is a special way to learn the game.

Matt and Flutie went on to win back-to-back tournaments in 2021 and 2022, forging a formidable duo in the process.

During the pandemic, Matt realized he could use his skills to reach different audiences, and used cornhole to become a content creator.

"When COVID started, I'd come home and watch TV or sit around and do nothing. After I got bored, I decided I was going to go throw. I had nothing else to do," Matt said. "I noticed some guys started doing some trick shots on Facebook. I saw it and thought, 'I can do that too.'"

He created a TikTok page where he posts trick shots, vlogs and clips from tournaments. His most viewed TikTok, amassing 1.3 million views, is of Matt sinking four beanbags in one throw.

For all their competitive accomplishments, celebrity encounters, social media engagement and television appearances, one thing remains completely apparent when speaking with Matt and Bret: they are two regular guys who just so happen to be exceptional cornhole players.

"I'm a normal dude," Matt said. "I'm just really good at cornhole."

They both work ordinary day jobs, enjoy spending time with friends and family, and drinking a beer or two, but on the weekends, they assume their roles as professional athletes.

When Matt wants to train, he heads to his father Art's barn to train in privacy. At his home, Matt's wife Beth allowed him to install a 40 foot deck with two regulation length cornhole boards.

Bret practices one day a week operating primarily off muscle memory. Although he did admit he may have to start practicing more, as the next generation of younger players are highly talented.

"People are just so good nowadays that I should practice more," Bret said. "There are people that just do cornhole for a living, and they do nothing but throw."

Bret's son could be one of those next generation players. The six-year old is already throwing beanbags with his father and grandfather.

"My son shows interest in it," Bret said. "When we get out and play outside, he'll get out and play with us every now and then."

If Bret's son chooses to pursue the path of professional cornhole, it will be the family's fourth generation of horseshoe or beanbag throwers. In many ways, the Guy's are the foremost family in cornhole, similar to the Manning's in football or the Williams' in tennis.

So who is actually better at cornhole? Matt or Bret?

In a 2022 video posted on the ACL's official YouTube page, Bret said he looks at Matt as a father and role model.

"I don't look at him as the GOAT," said Bret. "He's Matt Guy. To everybody else, he's the GOAT. To me, he's just my Dad. All the pressure that you think would happen when you're the son of the GOAT and all that, I don't feel none of it. I've been doing this game way too long to feel that type of pressure."

Although when asked, Bret conceded that the GOAT might have the edge. Matt humbly offered more context.

"I mean, (Bret’s) got days where he's just not going to be beat. I'm consistent. I don't always win, but I'm always there. That's what makes me the GOAT."

Will East Palestine train derailment affect NKY’s drinking water?

The Northern Kentucky Water District is monitoring water intake valves on the Ohio River after an East Palestine, Ohio train derailment and subsequent toxic plume caused concerns that chemicals could be finding their way into local drinking water.

Northern Kentucky does not need to worry about contaminated water right now, said Water Quality Manager Mary Carol Wagner. She said water is safe to drink and being closely monitored.

Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky get water from the Ohio River through water intake valves downstream. That water is then pumped into two reservoirs in Northern Kentucky that hold it until it’s needed. In instances like this, Wagner said, “we can actually shut our intakes from pulling water in from the Ohio into the reservoirs and feed off of the reservoirs and let the con- taminated water flow downstream.

About 50 train cars, including 10 carrying hazardous materials, derailed Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, according to the Associated Press. Vinyl chloride was later released into the air from five of those cars before crews ignited it to get rid of the highly flammable, toxic chemicals in a controlled environment, creating a dark plume of smoke.

Residents from nearby neighborhoods in Ohio and Pennsylvania were evacuated because of health risks from the fumes but have since been allowed to return.

Covington schools consider consolidation

Covington residents are voicing their opposition to a proposal from the school district to close 9th District Elementary, a move the district said would save almost $1 million in 2024.

If the schools were consolidated, the district said in a presentation to the school board last week, class sizes wouldn’t go up past the current 24 student-per-teacher ratio, and no teachers would lose their jobs.

Students at 9th District would be redistributed mostly between Latonia and Glenn O. Swing elementary schools.

Bill Wells, whose grandchildren attend school in the district, said at a school board meeting last week he was worried about how closing a school would impact the students’ education in the face of Covington’s growing population.

“By reducing schools it will probably increase the number of students per teacher,” Wells said, “and I feel in no way that that’s going to improve the student’s education.”

Mike Brosmere said his worry when it comes to consolidating the schools is that his granddaughter could become a statistic if her school closes. He expressed concern about overworked teachers.

“She’s getting offers from all over the country because of Holmes High School, because of the administration and because her grandfather is on her butt and will not accept anything but excellence,” he said. “I hope you guys [the board] don’t close the school and overload the teachers.”

Ken Kippenbrock, the district’s executive director of Human Resources and Operations, presented the plan at last week’s meeting.

“It’s a difficult subject,” Kippenbrock said, elaborating that this was not the “Kippenbrock plan” but rather the joint recommendation of the superintendent, who was not present at the meeting, and every member of the superintendent’s cabinet.

The proposal was based on trends that Kippenbrock’s office has observed in student enrollment and attendance over the last 40 years. According to the data presented, the district is at its lowest for both measures during that time period.

Projections from the data, which Kippenbrock expressed confidence in, suggested that enrollment and attendance was likely to drop further in the coming years.

This presents a problem for the district, as its funding from the state is tied to attendance rates, per the Support Education Excellence in Education in Kentucky (SEEK) program, which was put in place by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1990. Lower numbers of students means lower funding, which makes it harder to maintain all of the schools in the district, Kippenbrock argued. He said that the elementary schools were currently operating at about 71% capacity and still receives funds based on attendance numbers from before the onset of the pandemic.

Kippenbrock predicted that closing 9th District school would lead to an estimated savings of $961,000 for the district in 2024. He was quick to add that all of the students currently going to 9th District would be retained.

Plus, Kippenbrock stated, no teachers would lose their jobs if the school closed. He said the money freed up from the closure would make it easier to provide teachers and other staff with raises and benefits.

No votes took place at the meeting, so a decision on consolidation still hangs in the balance.

Taylor Mill moves forward with for funding new firehouse

Taylor Mill will build a new firehouse to replace the current one, which is in poor condition and needs to be repaired or replaced.

Two commissioners and Mayor Dan Bell voted in favor of a motion to issue a design-build proposal for a new fire department building with a maximum budget of $4 million at the Feb. 8 City Commission meeting.

Bell and commissioners Daniel Murray and Caroline Braden voted for the motion. Commissioners Mark Kreimborg and Ed Kuehne voted against it.

Taylor Mill’s firehouse is said to be functionally obsolete. The firehouse was not designed to house firefighters. Over the years, the city made accommodations to make the firehouse livable, but by low standards.

The city employs nine full-time and 16 part-time fire, paramedic, and EMT personnel who work on-site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to housing the on-duty fire staff, the new firehouse will occasionally provide accommodations for maintenance crews who need them.

“The firehouse project is planned to replace our 50-plus-year-old firehouse that was built at a time when the entire program was manned by volunteers who would respond to the firehouse from their homes, jobs, or wherever they might be when the call was made to respond,” City Administrative Officer Brian Haney said. “The new firehouse will be built with the next 50 years in mind, accommodating our current contingent of employees and addressing growth as the city looks to the future.”

Details on when construction will begin were not mentioned in the meeting.

Crescent Springs wins grant to improve sidewalks

The Kentucky League of Cities has issued a 2022 Liability Grant to the city of Crescent Springs in Kenton County.

The city intends to use the funds from the grant to improve the sidewalks and apron that serve as the entrance and exit to the city building. The grant will also enable the city to bring the same area closer to standards set by the American Disabilities Act.

Crescent Springs Mayor Mike Daugherty said he is thankful for the improvements it will bring.

“‘The replacement work will ensure that our sidewalk and apron are safer and more accessible to everyone in the city, whether they are walking or driving,’” the mayor said. “‘We are always looking for ways to bring the most benefit to our citizens while still being fiscally conservative and responsible with taxpayer money.’”