Brother And Sister Rule The Watermelon Pit At The University Place Festival

They munched. They slurped. They had watermelon juice flying off of their chins.

And after the final chunks of pinkish-red had been devoured, Tawni Duckworth and Darian Luchin became Univeristy Place’s own one-two, brother-and-sister champions of the watermelon-eating pit. The duo each took first at the University Place Festival’s watermelon-eating contest in their age groups.

It wasn’t pretty. In fact, the sounds of eating and slurping made it almost gross.

But the pair emerged victorious, which made the mounds of watermelon that they ate that much sweeter, or at least edible to the point where it didn’t all have to come back up a minute later.

Each had their strategies. For Darian, a 10-year-old who will attend Narrows View Intermediate, he didn’t eat much leading up to the contest.

For Tawni, a 17-year-old at Curtis and the only girl in her age group, it was all about not being intimidated by her male counterparts.

“I think I’ve eaten all the watermelon I need for awhile,” she said.

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