By Sarah Nagem
snagem@salisburypost.com
GRANITE QUARRY ó Tristan Poole, a fifth-grader clad in a Carolina Panthers jersey, seemed skeptical when he saw a pumpkin that was made to look like the Panthers’ starting quarterback.
“I’d vote for him if he didn’t have long hair,” Poole, 10, said at Granite Quarry Elementary on Friday. “Because Jake Delhomme doesn’t have long hair.”
Tristan, along with all the Granite Quarry students, used money to cast votes for their favorite pumpkin designs.
Each class decorated a pumpkin, and students filtered in throughout the day to place change in buckets beside their pumpkin picks.
So Poole did not pick the Delhomme pumpkin, complete with a printout of the football star’s face ó flowing black hair.
But he had lots of others to choose from: an elaborate frog, a spider, a clown, a cat, the Kool-Aid character, and Sponge Bob, among others.
Ten-year-old Christina Strobel knew her choice right away.
“My favorite one here is the firefighter, because my dad’s a firefighter,” she said.
Strobel’s fifth-grade class created a Frankenstein pumpkin. They painted it green and gave it a scary-looking face.
The class had voted to decide how to design their pumpkin.
“We wanted to have something scary, but not too scary, ’cause we didn’t want the kids to get scared,” Strobel said.
Kindergarten teacher Amanda Speth helped her students turn a pumpkin into a one-eyed monster.
Her students have art class once a week, and Speth said allowing them to get creative is a big part of learning.
“It’s important for them to be engaged and to show off their art skills and to be excited,” Speth said.
The money raised from the event will be used for technology in the school, PTA president Joanne Porter said.
The pumpkin-judging contest is a bit of a tradition at Granite Quarry, she said. But it usually takes place during the school’s annual fall festival.
School leaders decided to have the contest during the school day this year.
Previously, the school has raised about $200 from the contest, Porter said.
Teacher Tanya Hyatt ushered her fifth-grade class through the pumpkin display.
“I think that this part is kind of the most rewarding part,” she said. “They’re able to see every class has a different creativity, a different spin on things.”
Despite Poole’s skepticism, many students appreciated the creative nature of the Delhomme pumpkin.
It won the contest.