Four teams, four pumpkins and 45 minutes.

Red Cross hosted a pumpkin carving competition on Oct. 9 featuring four teams: Haie, Biggies, Mu Deng Fan Club and Winners. Each team was assigned a theme directly related to the Red Cross lines of service: International Services, Disaster Relief Services, Services to Armed Forces and Blood Services.
Within each team, members worked together to carve out pumpkins that represented the unique themes provided to them.

Sophomore and Red Cross officer Eric Xu said that the club had more teams than available pumpkins.
“Next year, if we were to do this again, we would definitely supply more pumpkins so more teams could compete,” Xu said. “I think the turnout was amazing, we had five teams [or around 30 people] sign up to compete.”

Senior Steven Lawson participated in the pumpkin carving competition with his team, the Mu Deng Fan Club.

“I really [liked] [Red Cross’s] meeting,” Lawson said. “I thought it was fun, just drawing on the pumpkin and cutting it out.”

With doughnuts as the prize, the Mu Deng Fan Club searched online for inspiration.

“We carved the American Flag because we found that [it was related to the services to the armed forces], and instead of the stars, we had a smiley face for the Jack o’ Lantern,” Lawson said.

While team Mu Deng Fan Club didn’t have a game plan going into the contest, team Haie had an idea of what they wanted to do.

“Our design was a fire with a tree inside of it,” Li said. “[We were] trying to symbolize the people who are in danger [from wildfires], that kind of natural disaster.”

Xu recognized the efforts of each team, pointing out how “all of the pumpkins were amazing.”

“I really liked the design [team] Winners created because they had many unique design’s related to the Red Cross’ blood services,” Xu said.

Sophomore and lead carver of the Winners team Mike Weng whittled a droplet of blood, the Red Cross symbol and a hand holding a heart.

As the clock ticked down from minutes to seconds, the teams presented their pumpkins to judge and Red Cross officer Laila Hakki, who after careful deliberation, labeled team Haie as the winners.

“It was pretty fun,” Li said. “It was a good experience. It made me want to go back to [Red Cross].”

Make sure to join the Red Cross’s Instagram @bhs.redcross and its Remind @bhsrc25 for more information on future club events and meetings.