Pumpkin Sling

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The History of the Pumpkin Sling

 

Now known as the Pumpkin Sling At Picatinny, and after a 2 year lapse in the competition due to Covid19, the pumpkin slinging resumed to Picatinny for the 2022 school year!

While the event has moved from location to location, and the name has changed, the spirit of the event started in 2010 in White Township, NJ, still continues.

The event started as the Last Fling Pumpkin Sling, because it was designed as the last celebration of the harvest before going into the winter. The organization made an attempt to raise money to promote Warren County even more, as well as establishing scholarships in the same spirit of the original Punkin Chunkin in Delaware.

It quickly outgrew its original location in White Township and moved to a large hay field in Harmony Township, on Montana Mountain. After three years there the Farmland Presevation police showed up and told the kids they were having too much fun and accused organizers of breaking rules that they made up as they went along. Everyone thought it would really be the last "Last Fling Pumpkin Sling."

For several years the group rented the Pocono Raceway. Lack of funding and support prohibited another year at the racetrack. But determined that it not be the last, Last Fling Pumpkin Sling, the group searched for a new location yet again.

In 2016 the group was invited by Picatinny Arsenal's STEM office to organize the event at their military base in New Jersey. So the Pumpkin Sling landed back in New Jersey. The only drawback was that the event was closed to the public. But the experience for the youth involved to work with some of the best engineering minds was priceless. The group has been invited back to Picatinny each year and renamed the Pumpkin Sling at Picatinny.