The University of Central Oklahoma broke the world record for the largest game of Duck, Duck, Goose last week, the first to be broken in the institution’s 120-year history.
Over 1,600 people from UCO and the surrounding area gathered at the campus’s East Hall Field last Tuesday to participate in the record-shattering game.
While some students had concerns about the location (UCO’s Wantland Stadium had been the original location for the event), anticipation was high.
“I’m here to break a world record,” freshman Lasey Compton, from Blanchard, Okla., said.
Students and other attendees gathered at the east end of the field before the game to watch the UCO Cheer squad perform a short routine and receive instruction from Stampede Week director Ryan Robbins.
The participants formed a rough circle within the confines of East Hall Field in the minutes leading up to the game, enclosing various members of the media and UCO’s mascot, Buddy Broncho, the first “celebrity gooser.”
The game started at 8 p.m. and lasted for 15 minutes, per official Guinness World Records instructions. The first “goosers-and-goosed” included the 2011 Miss UCO winner, Rachel Hill, and newly-minted university president Don Betz.
“I’ve never played (Duck, Duck, Goose) before,” Betz said after his run. “I’m sure I made a fool out of myself, but I had a great time.”
“I felt like it was a good experience, and a good opportunity to show my school spirit,” Hill said.
The final attendance was announced afterward and stood at 1,634 attendees, beating the official Guinness World Record set in 2005 by the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, by over 200 people.
“I am so excited,” Dawn Ryals, sophomore orientation leader, said. “I helped to work this and set it up, and I’m so excited and it’s such a great turnout. (…) I was really worried, but as Bronchos we pulled through.”
While it may seem like Duck, Duck, Goose was a simple record to beat, it was a huge undertaking on the part of the planning committee involved.
“We just wanted something different to do during Stampede Week,” Kay Robinson, director of Campus Activities and Events, said. “I had done a record-breaking event at another school before I came here and it was pretty fun, so we decided to try and do it here.”
Campus Activities and Events, led by Stampede Week Director Robbins, went through a list of possible records to break; they came to Duck, Duck, Goose after some deliberation.
“In one of our meetings, we just kind of sat down, and started jotting down ideas,” Robbins said. “Later that night I went on guinnessworldrecords.com and started looking everything up, and none of them were possible.”
Robbins said that part of the problem was that the threshold for each record was simply too high.
“The biggest pillow fight was 8,000 people, and the biggest game of freeze tag was like 6,000 people, so some of it was just unrealistic,” he said.
After making the decision to go with Duck, Duck, Goose, Robbins called Robinson and began working with Guinness World Records to make sure everything met the standards the records recording organization set.
In order to qualify for the record, according to Robbins, a public notary had to be present; several forms of media, as well as a notable-yet-neutral figure in the community needed to show up; and multiple ways to make sure the number of participants was accurate were required.
“We were surprised, actually, at how much of an effort it really was behind the scenes to actually get the world record done,” Robbins said.
All this work for a world record may seem ridiculous, but the alternative may have been more expensive.
“It would have cost us over $5,000 to get somebody here (from Guinness World Records, Ltd.), and we don’t have the money to pay $5,000 for somebody to come, so they just send you what you need to do, and you just send it back to Guinness,” Robinson said.
It will take about three weeks for Guinness to process UCO’s application and let the school know whether the record is official or not.