There were East High School Angels in the pumpkin patch Saturday, and they were launching those gourds sky-high.
The Denver high school’s science club took first place in the catapult division at Aurora’s Jack-O-Launch pumpkin-hurling competition with a 46-foot throw that hit the target dead-on.
The Jack-O-Launch is in its ninth year of competition at the annual PumpkinFest at DeLaney Farm in Aurora. This year, 11 teams went gourd-to-gourd for distance and accuracy in three categories: the catapult, trebuchet and the air cannon.
Veterans to the sport are known to dress in costume for the event: one member of “Dick Cheney’s Wild Safari” team, whose cannon blasted a pumpkin several hundred feet, dressed as an ape carrying the vice president in a cage.
East High’s catapult, nicknamed the “Ghetto-pult” and built less than a week before the competition, was the club’s first attempt at building a medieval siege weapon.
“Sometimes people get the idea that East, being ‘inner city,’ is ghetto, and that’s not a fair label at all,” said science teacher Joel Noble. “Everything we’ve done seemed impossible when we started, and now look where we are now.”
Cassie Hewlings: 303-954-1638 or chewlings@denverpost.com
