Interested in sports but don’t have the motivation to attend a game? Do you ever wonder what sports would look like if we used food instead of regular balls? Well, question no longer as this past weekend, Saint’s athletics indulged our childhood desires to play with our food and replaced the balls of the sports teams with various food items.

Players were amused at first but quickly became frustrated as they realized that food simply does not compare to traditional sports equipment. For starters, out on the diamond, the baseball team pitched beets, which worked well for the most part, but did not travel as far as baseballs and some split in half when they came in contact with the bat. The tennis team attempted to use apples, but after a few serves, they switched to oranges as the apples either stuck into the racket or exploded on impact, spraying apple chunks and juice all over the players and the court. They found that oranges were significantly less fragile, but definitely did not bounce as well as tennis balls do, leading to a pile-up of citrus at the base of the net.

The golf team experienced similar difficulties with walnuts, as they either flew perfectly or broke into pieces players consequently wore goggles to avoid getting shell fragments in their eyes.

In the rink, the hockey team discovered that frozen hamburger patties from Dana worked surprisingly well, but their shape threw players off as the patties did not fly well and were challenging for the goalie to catch.

Inspired by the sports teams’ efforts, non-athletes created their own games to see if they could have more luck using food items. A group of students gathered in the quad to do a sandwich making competition in which players had to frisbee-toss slices of bread to their teammates, who then had to assemble as many sandwiches as they could in 10 minutes. The group with the most sandwiches won gift cards to the Brewer Bookstore. On the sidelines, students tossed snacks such as popcorn and goldfish crackers into their friends mouths or competed to see who could throw pub cookies the furthest. Other popular events included ping-pong with grapes, pool with onions and hot-potato volleyball.

Overall, the Food Olympics were a wild way to spend the weekend and will be remembered by SLU students for many semesters to come. Though the games may sound wasteful, this was a one-time event (for science?) and squirrels were corralled to clean up most of the mess. The rest was composted. Stay tuned for future wacky events and make sure to attend future Saints games, regardless of if there is food involved!