2021 Pfeiffer University Halloween Pumpkin Contest: And the Winner is…

For the last week, we invited the softball community to vote for their favorite entry of the six excellent submissions in Pfeiffer University’s 4^th Annual Softball Painted Pumpkin Contest.

The vote have been tabulated and the winner this year is (scroll down to find the answer!):

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…. Grumpy Cat!

Receiving the top number of votes (a contest-best 36%) by those in the softball community, the Grumpy Cat entry was created by a quartet of Falcon players:

• senior pitcher Ashlyn Kennedy
• junior shortstop Kyndell Warren
• sophomore outfielder Ruth Hill
• freshman pitcher/infielder Gracie Griffin

The feline tie-in was appropriate for the Halloween holiday, although usually a black cat is more representative of October 31 rather than a grumpy black and white one.

So how did the winning team come up with the idea of replicating the original “Grumpy Cat” photo that became a world-wide meme in 2021?

Here’s the original photo that inspired the winning creation:

“There are only two cat crazy people on the team,” Ashlyn explained earlier today, “Kyndell and myself and as soon as we were put on the same ‘Pumpkin Team,’ we knew we just had to do a cat of some sort!”

“Ruth and Gracie just seemed to like the idea so they went along with it. Ruth is extremely talented with a pencil and Gracie wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty painting the pumpkin, so it just came together really well.”

“We wanted to make it different and big so we came up with different ideas of adding a head, tail, etc. and voila, Grump Cat… the most famous cat we could think of!”

Coach Sherrill added there was another great tie-in that made the concept a sure winner.

“Ashlyn has a cat named ‘Pumpkin’ too so that was a natural fit… how ironic is that?”

There is a downside, however, as the championship winning coach reveals jokingly

“We hear about ‘Pumpkin’ more than we talk about hitting technique!” he laughs.

Congrats to all the entries—they are all winners in our book—and Happy Halloween to everyone!

— Brentt Eads, Extra Inning Softball