photo by: John Young

From left, Tucker Gabriel, Lacey Vesecky, Paulette Hays and Holly Vesecky eat watermelon slices as fast as they can while competing in the Barnyard Olympics at the Douglas County Fair on Saturday morning. The Barnyard Olympics consists of eight events in an obstacle course like layout. Individual events include carrying and stacking bales of hay, carrying buckets of water, eating watermelon and locking a farm gate.

The bucket flip was the secret to success Saturday in the Douglas County Fair’s Barnyard Olympics.

“It’s hard,” said Paulette Hays of Eudora. “It can cost you time.”

The task, one of seven faced by the 41 teams competing on a course laid out in a livestock show barn, simply required the four team members to toss a white 5-gallon bucket in the air over and over until it landed right-side up. The course also required teams to carry and stack straw bales, toss a plastic scoop into a bucket 5 feet away, carry and empty buckets of water in a tank, take a big bite of watermelon, perform a do-si-do dance step with a partner and close a gate after leaving the barn. It was the tricky bucket flip that most often had teams squandering precious seconds on the timed course.

Eighteen-year-old Hays and her three teammates — Holly Vesecky, 15, Lacey Vesecky, 17, and Tucker Gabriel, 19 — proved adept at the flip, and one of the team members quickly stuck the bucket landing each of the four times the team competed on the course. All four forays onto the course were necessary as Hays’ team, called the Seniors, got locked in a back-and-forth duel with another team called the Kemps, whose members were Tristen Kapelle, 11, Dalton Vesecky, 19, Britten Coates, 15, and Tate Anderson, 14. The teams were tied at the end of the event, forcing organizers Cindy Allen and Kari Wempe to quickly improvise a tiebreaker.

“Two of my sisters are on the Seniors,” Dalton Vesecky said. “It always gets competitive. I’ve been on the winning team the last four years.”

There was another incentive to win. Team members had to ante up a dollar each time they competed on the course, with the money distributed back to the top teams when the Barnyard Olympics were over.

A new champion was crowned Saturday as the Seniors won the tiebreaker event, using buckets to catch the most tossed scoops in a minute-long tie-breaker event judges designed on the fly.

Not all the participants Saturday were as competitive as the Seniors and Kemps. Families completed the tasks with broad smiles, and one dad circled the course carrying his daughter.

Karen Ice completed the course alongside her daughter Becky Swearingen, daughter-in-law Heather Ice and grandson Chase Ice. She entered because she wanted to send a message to youngsters present and maintain the family’s four-generation tradition at the fair and with the Kanwaka 4-H Club.

“I think sometimes the younger generation doesn’t want to do something just for fun,” she said, adding, “I’ll do anything for my grandson.”

The multi-generation participation in and enjoyment of the Barnyard Olympics is part of its appeal, said organizer Wempe, who first brought the event to the fair five years ago.

“We have a ball with it,” she said. “It gets the kids exhausted on the last day of the fair and gives them something to do that gets their parents and grandparents involved. All the things the teams are asked to do are things kids do on the farm. They get to share that with the city kids who enter.”