Runner-turned-cornhole player Allison Peters: 'I like to win'

Allison Peters doesn't get to run as much these days as she once did.

That's because the Kernersville resident, who usually would show up high in the finishing orders of area road races, is now showing up on CBS Sports and ESPN2 playing professionally in the American Cornhole League.

"Once you start getting down to the very last few games in the tournament, you get to start showing off some of your skills, putting the bag in the hole and beating other teams that are good," Peters says. "That's what fuels me is that competitive nature.

"I like to win."

Her spring and summer have taken her around the country for ACL competition. Memorial Day weekend in Indiana found her competing in a fundraising event with 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi and against teams that featured Indy driver James Hinchliffe; the Colts' Kenny Moore; and George Michael Steinbrenner IV, the son of Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner and grandson of The Boss.

She has competed in places such as Albany, N.Y.; Asheville; Austin, Texas; and Atlanta.

And in Memphis, Tenn., in late July, Peters won a women's singles pro shootout in competition televised on the CBS Sports cable network. Then in the league's world championship, early this month in Rock Hill, S.C., Peters clinched a place as a professional for the 2021-22 season, tying for third among 128 women in singles and getting third of 64 coed teams, fifth of 29 women's doubles teams and 15th in the pro doubles bracket. For her rookie season, among her accomplishments were playing for the league's U.S. team, appearing in three women's doubles finals and four pro qualifier semifinals, getting a No. 24 ranking in doubles and being one of eight women to qualify outright for next season.

Peters, a third-grade teacher at Union Cross Elementary School in Kernersville, is a relative newcomer to cornhole.

"I was living in an apartment complex that had cornhole boards, and we started playing there," she says of her start in the game late in 2018. "If you won, you stayed on the board. So of course I'm very competitive, I wanted to win, and that was how I got started."

And how this league got started is the brainchild of Stacey Moore, a 1991 N.C. State graduate and Charlotte native. Moore told ESPN.com recently that his inspiration evolved from the parking lots around Carter-Finley Stadium at football games.

"Cornhole is very social – anyone that enjoys being social and meeting new people easily gravitates towards it," Moore told ESPN.com. "But people also wanted to play cornhole more seriously than other tailgating games.

"I just became convinced it had the opportunity to be elevated into a legitimate business opportunity and a legitimate sport."

There's money to be made, of course. Peters says six-figure salaries are possible for the sport's top players, but she also claims income from a number of sponsorships that include AAR Roofing in Kernersville; Hudson Autoworks in Greensboro; AllCornhole bags; Scottie Springer, a DJ with a mobile photo booth for celebration events; Chris Dalton's Absolute Pressure and Soft Washing of Madison; and the Girls Throw Too podcast.

Moore believes the sport can get on the Olympic schedule, and so does Peters.

"We've come a long way in a very short amount of time," Peters says.

As for her offseason, what offseason? Peters says competition in regionals will begin in September.