A juicy philanthropy

The event raised money for the Central Missouri Food Bank and others.

By Sam Balaski, Reporter
Sept. 11, 2007

Shouts of "Are you ready to rock?" and "Are you ready to show your melons?" could be heard throughout Hinkson Field on Saturday.

This theme of joking and laughter carried on through the afternoon at the softball fields located off of Providence Road.

Watermelon Fest is an annual philanthropic event hosted by the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity to raise money and food for several organizations including The Salvation Army and the Central Missouri Food Bank.

"We're trying to raise about 150,000 pounds of food, in addition to raising money that will help these charities out," said Patrick Walker, Lambda Chi Alpha's philanthropy chairman. "And we have a lot of fun doing it."

The large field was filled with blue tarps and piles of watermelons waiting to be smashed on the ground or chopped with a machete.

The stage was set for a sticky day in the sun.

The event was organized with nine contributing sororities, broken into 43 teams of 10 girls each, with each team being coached by a Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity member.

Each sorority paid $50 to enter its first team into the games and $25 for each additional team entered by the same sorority.

The coaches of each team led the girls in cheers as they walked around to the individual game stations.

Each sorority team had cheers, and they were dressed up to represent the theme the women had as a team.

The themes of the teams included "athletic nerds" and "superman." Several teams wore pink and green to represent the fruit of the day.

"It's fun to dress up with your friends and act silly," said sophomore Laura Ponath, a Kappa Delta sorority member who wore neon green plastic glasses and knee socks.

All the games during the day had a watermelon theme.

Games included watermelon "flippy cup," seed-spitting contests, watermelon gum chewing, watermelon relay races on slippery oil-covered tarps and the watermelon toss.

During the watermelon toss, women would toss chunks of watermelon into a bucket held on top of their coach's head.

The game got messy as more and more watermelons were crushed on the slippery tarp.

One of the most popular games was the watermelon juice "flippy cup" game. With this game, a team of 10 girls was lined up along a table with 10 glasses of watermelon juice. The first team to have each of the members to finish her cup of juice and flip the cup over won.

"It's exciting, we're going to win," freshman Pi Beta Phi sorority member Abbey Law said.

Perhaps the messiest game of the day was the watermelon relay race. The race was held on a tarp covered in vegetable oil and watermelon juice. Team members had to carry a watermelon around several bases set out in the field and then slide to the finish line across the tarp.

Eventually the structured games that had been planned for the day dissolved into rambunctious tossing of watermelon all over the field. By the end of day, juice, watermelon chunks and seeds were all that was left behind.

Editor's note:

Editor-in-Chief Steve Oslica is a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

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