by Ashley Miller

If you like pumpkins or medieval siege weapons, you would’ve loved the 2014 TAG Punkin’ Chunkin’.This exhilarating event had fellow students face off against each other by throwing Mallowcreme Pumpkins across the high school cafeteria with trebuchets that the students made themselves.

There were three objectives: Distance, accuracy and the Cold-Blooded Challenge. The Cold-Blooded Challenge was where the contestants would attempt to knock off a picture of the advisor’s son off of a stack of wooden blocks with the pumpkins. This was yet another test of accuracy. Only three groups managed to do this. The advisor, Brian Adams, gave an explanation for allowing people to hit his son with pumpkins: “My wife was getting the pictures online—I think it was Shutterfly or something. She went to type in eight and came out with 88 copies of the same picture.” This exhilarating event had fellow students face off against each other by throwing Mallowcreme Pumpkins across the high school cafeteria with trebuchets that the students made themselves.
Tension was high during the competition. Contestants would say to each other things such as, “Take it down a notch or 38,” or “Wow, you got the sarcasm clap from a member of your own team.”
With only 30 minutes to get the best results possible, students yelled and bickered, threw back pumpkins a tad too hard and nervously ate the pumpkins. In the end, one group came out of the competition victorious. This group consisted of  seniors: Wade Hill and Ian Drobney and juniors: Morgan Novak, Karina Van Dyke and Carlee Ver Helst with their trebuchet, “Above-Average Chunk Master.” Coming in second with an honorable mention with their trebuchet “Huzzah” were freshmen: Ryan Palm, Baylee Smith and Ashley Miller.
“It’s exciting to be the winner of something that is the beginning of a TAG tradition at PCM,” Van Dyke said.
“I think that PCM Punkin’ Chunkin’ went pretty well this year, especially considering it was our first year doing it,” said Adams, “I think that kids got to work with problem solving and trial and error strategies and now have a better understanding of the physics of trebuchets than they did before. I would say that it was a success.”