Students from buildings across Union’s campus competed on Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. in ResLife’s Chomped event as part of this year’s Union Cup. The event was won by Grace 3.
Chomped, a parody of the Food Network show “Chopped,” required competitors to create a dessert that included the three secret ingredients in a 65 minute time period. This year, the secret ingredients were bananas, cream cheese and potato chips. Desserts were judged on taste, use of the secret ingredients and presentation.
Chomped has been one of the staple events of the Union Cup since its conception in the 2019-2020 Union Cup. David Bowman, the current Assistant Residence Director for Heritage Complex and a former Union Cup champion with the Pollard Pandas in 2019-2020, explained Chomped’s concept.
“The idea of it stemmed from wanting more outlets for students to come out to an event,” Bowman said. “Obviously there’s Half K, which is more like competitive and athletic. There’s Trivium which is more like brain smart and memory kind of stuff. Chomped was more like, okay we have a lot of people that like to cook or bake or want to be creative in that way.”
Mo Sparks, a senior communications major who led Dodd to be Union Cup champion last year and is now the RA of Grace 3, was excited by the win and what it meant for a Women’s Quads building.
“I think a lot of people tend to count Women’s Quads out,” Sparks said. “So, I think it was really cool to represent a Women’s Quads building with just a really good dish.”
Grace 3’s winning dessert was described as Dolly Parton banana yellow cake, layered inside a mason jar with cream cheese, whipped cream and homemade strawberry syrup. It was paired with a grape and raspberry sparkling drink and caramelized strawberries as decoration.
The inaugural Union Cup, which began 10 years ago, started as an attempt to bond Union’s residents.
“The most important part of the Union Cup is to bring people together, bring dorms together,” Bowman said. “And oftentimes you see guys or girls getting to know people within their building that they wouldn’t be friends with otherwise. So that’s the biggest motivation behind the Union Cup.”
According to Bowman, this year’s Chomped had one of the best turnouts since the Covid-19 pandemic. One new person to the event was Sparks’ new roommate, a senior who had never come to a Union Cup event before coming to support Mo this year.
“Literally after every single event she’ll just kind of pause and be like, ‘I am so sad that I never participated in these before now,’” Sparks said. “We can get so caught up in the study grind or the friends or the ‘oh it’s 9 o’clock’ that we miss so many amazing things that have been so carefully planned.”
Sparks went on to talk about the importance of taking time to be involved in things like the Union Cup on campus that many of her friends have learned the hard way.
“I think a lot of people miss out on a lot of amazing events that ResLife, SAC, SGA and so many other clubs put on because of excuses which are valid in the moment,” Sparks said. “But there’s a lot more to college than just studying in the library, you know? It’s all these individual moments that make your college experience.”
The runners up of Chomped were Rogers in third and Craig in second.
In the overall Cup standings, Craig moved from fourth to first place after Chomped while Rogers moved up from third to second place. Grey rounded out the top three entering the winter break, having fallen from second place. Hope 1, which entered the event in first, fell all the way down to fourth.
The next Union Cup event will be Trivium in the Spring semester.
