Pumpkin Avengers defeat dads, place second in pumpkin launching competition

The pumpkin was in place.

Josh Jachim steadied his right foot on the base of his team’s wooden slingshot cannon and crouched away from the launching machine. He put a hand on the edge of his black German helmet.

“It’s safety,” he said, tapping his helmet. “Every time I bent down, I got hit in the head.”
To his left, Gregory Darling held the pull that released the pumpkin.

The two boys and their brothers, Nick Jachim and Evan Darling, had attended the Great Bloomington Pumpkin Launch at Hilltop Garden and Nature Center before, but never as contestants.

“We want to go against our dads,” Josh said.

“Yeah, we got bored watching him,” Nick added.

On Saturday, elementary students Josh, Gregory and Nick formed the Pumpkin Avengers and battled their fathers, Glenn Darling and Joe Jachim on team BPG 9000, in the accuracy competition. The Great Bloomington Pumpkin Launch was split into three age divivisions — youth, student and adult — and two competitions — distance and accuracy.

Each team had two chances to launch a pumpkin as far as they could and then another two chances to get as close to a target as possible. Though the distance competition pits age groups against each other, Event Coordinator Bill Ream said all six participating teams would go head-to-head for accuracy.

That placed Josh and Gregory’s wooden cannon against the white-tubed cannon from which they had borrowed their design.

The boys’ slingshot took two days to build and a week to revise, Nick said.

“We just found out two or three weeks ago that they had a kids section,” Josh said.
The divisions and rules were changed this year, Ream said, because the launching competition didn’t take place the last two years due to a low number of teams.

“We got a lot of interest from spectators in bringing it back,” he said, “and we had seven teams sign up to participate. Obviously, one team couldn’t make it.”

For the first six years, the competition took place at Hilltop and then moved to RCA Park for two years before taking a break.

“Hopefully, they’ll keep doing it,” Ream said. “It’s a real unusual activity.”

Two 8-by-8 foot tarps with scarecrows in the middle marked 150 feet and 400 feet accuracy targets. The Pumpkin Avengers aimed its cannon at the 150 foot tarp. Its distance shots had gone 150 feet and 180 feet, respectively, so it’d be right on target.

The adult teams launched both of their accuracy shots first, with the youths’ dads getting their pumpkin the closest — 44 feet from the 400 foot target.

The first to go of the youth and student groups, the boys eyed the slingshot’s position.
“Move it to the left just a tiny (bit). That’s it. That’s it,” Nick said.

“I think we’re dead on,” Gregory replied.

He held his hands tight on the pull, waiting for the crowd’s count down.
Three. Two. One.

Gregory pulled.

The five-pound pumpkin shot through the air in an arch. Gregory fell to the ground from the slingshot’s force. He watched as the pumpkin splattered to the left of the scarecrow, possibly on the tarp.

“I think we hit it,” he said.

“We’re so close,” Josh said.

Ream stood behind the team, waiting for the measures from the field to crackle over his walkie-talkie. He announced the Pumpkin Avengers’ accuracy into a microphone.
“Twenty-one feet with pumpkin seeds on the tarp,” he said.

The boys spent little time cheering. Instead, they readied their cannon for the next shot.

While the Pumpkin Avengers did not take home the accuracy prize — an Ivy Tech Community College student team won with a shot 11 feet from the tarp — it placed first in its division for distance and second in accuracy after the Ivy Tech team.

“We’ll definitely be doing it again,” Josh said.