By Tori La Rue | [email protected]

Less than a month after the 2016 Summer Olympics ended, West Jordan teens gathered for some summer games of their own: The Bingham Creek Library Chocolate Olympics. 

“We try to have a fun and active event every month, and we’d heard about other library’s having a similar activity, so we adapted it,” Angie Wagner, Youth Services librarian, said. “This is our first time trying the Chocolate Games.”  

On Sept. 8, about 20 teens went head to head at Hershey’s Kiss unwrapping, doughnut discus, Whopper tossing and Oreo stacking. Wagner officiated the games in the library’s meeting room and outside grounds. 

The meeting room filled with screams as the teens divided into four teams and readied themselves for a relay in which they’d unwrap Hershey’s kisses while wearing oven mitts. The first team to stream eight participants through the line would claim the gold for that event. 

Team Potato Land chanted Max Johnson’s name as he was their last participant for the event and could potentially bring the victory for them, but Team Rainbow Unicorn, consisting of Zoey Peasley, Lacee Hanson, Bailey Loutensock, Sierra Angerton and AnnaLeah Mecham, stole the lead by being the first team to successfully unwrap eight Hershey’s kisses. 

“The victory was yummy, good and fun,” Zoey said. 

The Chocolate Olympians headed outside for the next round of games: chocolate mini doughnut discus. Every contestant lobbed mini donuts as far as they could across the side lawn of the library. 

Four doughnuts were about tied for the farthest throw until 14-year-old Porter Southworth hurled his first mini doughnut across the lawn. Several of his competitors let out audible gasps, as his throw was several yards longer than anyone else’s. For the next few minutes, other teens tried and failed to surpass Porter’s mark. Porter explained his ability to launch the doughnut. 

“I used to be part of a lot of sports where you throw stuff, like baseball,” he said. “Also, when my family gets bored while camping we throw rocks off of cliffs, and I just got really good at it from there.” 

Porter described his first-place as “awesomeness,” and his fellow teens geared up to beat him in the next round of their Olympics. 

One team member knelt in the center of four equidistant team members. The teammate in the middle held a plastic cup on his or her head, and the remaining team members attempted to toss Whoppers into the cup in 30 to 60 second intervals. 

Bailey, for Team Rainbow, used strategy to bring her team to the lead. She moved her head from side to side to catch the candies. While none of the other teams did this, Bailey was not disqualified, and her team won several rounds of the game. 

“I just had to have confidence that we could really do this—that we could really win,” she said. 

Potato Land took their first victory in the second round of the circular candy toss, and all four teams proceeded to the Oreo balancing game. One person laid on their back, and the other team members tried to stack as many cookies on the person’s forehead as possible without the cookies tumbling over. 

Three teams won three different rounds of the cookie balancing, but AnnaLeah was relieved that her team, Team Rainbow, beat her sister’s team, Potato Land, in the tiebreaker. 

The games were mostly for fun, and not for a major competition, Wagner said, but the teens who won the most games were given mega chocolate bars, which served as their symbolic gold medals. 

The Chocolate Olympics was so popular that it might find its way back to the Bingham Creek Library again, Wagner said. Luckily, the library doesn’t have to wait four years for its next games.