Cornhole. You know, the game.

VIRGINIA BEACH

Cornhole.

Yeah, that's right.

Cornhole.

It's a game. Beanbags filled with cracked corn. Tossed at a wooden box with a hole in the top.

You knew that. If you didn't, oh my, what you must be thinking.

Debbie Lowrance wasn't thinking that when she set out a few months ago to become The Cornhole Queen of Virginia Beach.

Lowrance sat in her living room earlier this month talking about cornhole etiquette, how there's not a typical cornhole person, that cornholers come from all walks of life. But when it came to the question of the game's name, her husband, Keith, stepped in.

Debbie calls him conservative.

"She did not know the connotation from the old days," Keith explained.

"I did not," Debbie agreed.

"Everything sort of adjusts in language," Keith said. "After six months, I didn't hear the word that way. We try not to mention it or know anything about it or act like we know the name."

Well, that's not what Debbie does.

"On my car, on the Cornhole Wagon," she said, gesturing to the front of her house, "I've got one of the signs on both sides."

The signs that say, "Virginia Beach Cornhole."

On the license plate of the Cornhole Wagon - and yes the folks at DMV had a little talk before they gave her the name - she's got another reminder.

C-O-R-N-H-O-L.

Conservative Keith shook his head.

"Debbie doesn't go into things part way."

There's little doubt that cornhole is sweeping the East Coast. The thwack, thwack, thwack sound of corn-filled beanbags landing on wooden boxes could be heard at the East Coast Surfing Championships, at an Old Dominion University football tailgate, in parking lots at ACC football games, at NASCAR races.

Maybe it's the simplicity of the game, or the ease with which it can be picked up. The cornhole boxes are set up 27 feet apart (front edge to front edge) and a person pitches beanbags underhanded to try to get them to land on the platform and slide into the hole, or just go straight in.

Debbie Lowrance first took note of the game's addictive nature at a July 4 gathering this year. Groups had been playing all day, and Conservative Keith had made the championship round. A thunderstorm rumbled closer and closer.

"He's out there because he's winning," Debbie said, looking at her husband, "and it's lightning."

"It was a little off in the distance," Keith said.

Debbie woke up at night and thought about that. Her husband, cornholing during a storm. The next day she informed her husband she needed to book a flight to Chicago for the following weekend. More than 1,000 cornholers were scheduled to play in a tournament at Soldier Field.

Debbie went and saw what she thought she might.

"Monday morning when I came back, I was at the business license place first thing," Debbie said. "Of course, nobody had the name 'Beach Cornhole.' "

At that point, Debbie and Keith became for-profit cornholers. Debbie has started cornhole leagues, and they make and sell cornhole sets - unfinished for $79, painted with your favorite football, baseball or college team colors for around $150.

If you want to rent some games for a cookout, the Lowrances can do that, too, and for a slight fee they will deliver them in the Cornhole Wagon. Beach Cornhole sets will soon be available at Taylor Do-It Centers, Debbie said.

Her personal cell phone has been dragged into the business, too. "So I answer, 'Beach Cornhole?' "

It is 5:30 p.m., and the Virginia Beach Sportsplex is deserted - except for the Cornhole Wagon and a few other cars at one corner of the parking lot.

Keith sets up the boards, carefully measuring off the 27 feet between them. For league matches, Virginia Beach Cornhole provides all the boxes and beanbags, he explains. A person can finish a box with a different kind of paint, or someone will bring new bags that won't slide like well-worn ones, and cornholers are very particular about fairness, he says.

Then there's Bobby Reese's home set.

"He made his own," says his wife, Susan. "It's good."

"Yeah, except the hole's not quite round," Bobby says. "I used a jigsaw."

Debbie would like to think that's how cornhole started: In the Midwest, boards from an old barn, plenty of corn lying around to fill the bags. Pure, wholesome beginnings of cornhole. Several places do claim to be Cornhole Capitals: Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, or maybe some fraternity in Kentucky. No one knows for sure.

Debbie has been trying to teach the league members proper cornhole behavior: introductions at the beginning, leaving the bags stacked neatly next to the hole for the next game, shaking hands when the contest is over.

She gets on her megaphone and yells, "Remember your cornhole etiquette!"

A team called Rockstar Barbies shows up: two women, hot-pink bows in their hair, wearing black T-shirts with white print: "Cornhole is Life."

"Hey, I was watching that cornhole video," one guy tells his teammate, "and they said the guy who's the national champ? Forty in a row in the hole!"

The games start, with competitors pitching bags on eight sets of boards.

"Good throw!" someone calls out.

"Eleven to two!" another yells.

The joking ends when the pitching begins.

Bobby Reese and his wife are on separate teams for this night, and Bobby trash-talks her:

"Once they say go, I don't even know you."

Debbie sits at her makeshift scorer's table, Virginia Beach Cornhole sign on the side, and smiles at what she's put together in three months.

The sound - that thwack, thwack, thwack - drowns out everything else.

"I love that sound," she says. "It's kind of like a meditative thing."

Lon Wagner, (757) 446-2341, lon.wagner@pilotonline.com