CSF looks to break world record with second attempt at balloon fight

By Brian Shlonsky

After failing to break the Guinness World Record for largest water balloon fight last year by only 110 participants, the stage has been set for this year’s event to obliterate the previous record.

The Christian Student Fellowship at UK will again sponsor the World’s Largest Water Balloon Fight, which will be held at 11:55 p.m. on Friday at the Johnson Center Fields.

“We are expecting a larger turnout this year because we doubled the amount of balloons to 100,000 and pushed the event back a week so the upper-classmen can participate as well, because last year, only the freshmen were on campus,” said CSF associate staff member Greg Schutte.

In order to break the Guinness World Record, both the number of participants and the number of balloons must be higher than the previous record holder.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the current record was set as part of the XBox 360 Water Balloon Challenge in Sydney, Australia, in 2006. The 2,849 participants in the fight threw 51,400 balloons.

“Last year we broke the record for number of balloons by about a thousand, but were short on people by 110,” Schutte said.

Schutte expects three-to-five thousand participants at this year’s balloon fight.

The CSF at UK has received calls from the University of Florida, Florida State University and the city of Atlanta who have all attempted to break the record as well but failed, Schutte said.

“In 2008, the fight itself lasted only about four minutes, but people hung around having fun, diving through the wet grass doing Supermans until around 12:30,” Schutte said.

The CSF event is a fundraiser for the group. For each balloon filled is a dollar raised.

Since CSF is a non-profit organization, donations and good deals on the balloons are given, Schutte said.

“We have been filling balloons for two months,” Schutte said. “At one point, every Walgreens in Lexington was sold out of balloons because we bought so many.”

More information on the event can be found on CSF’s Web site, (http://www.ukcsf.org).