12 compete in Flub’s ice cream eating contest at Butler County Fair: ‘It seems like everyone got stuck on the slushie’

“I mean, I was in clutch,” Peck said. “But [after puking I felt] kind of mad, disappointed. I mean, I had that on lock. I was gonna win.”

He said next year, if he competes again, he’ll pace himself more and remember to drink the slushie.

In total, contestants finished about 45 pints of ice cream, or 5.5 gallons.

Michael Thom won after finishing the slushie and 4.5 pints of ice cream.

Right after the contest, he said “I just won the Flub’s ice cream contest, and I feel good.”

“It was kind of like I was back in high school, just kind of making myself getting pumped up all day,” he said. “I just had a little bag of chips for lunch to get something in my stomach, [and] I was consuming water all day to keep my stomach stretched out during the competition.”

Going in, he said his strategy was to chase the sherbet with water after every bite, but the ice cream was easy.

Thom added he didn’t experience any brain freezes, which helped propel him to victory.

The Flub’s money will be put to good use, he said. “We have pumpkin season coming up and we’re really big on the pumpkin [ice cream] and we’re really big on stocking up in the wintertime.”

Noah Connaughton, son of Flub’s owner Brian Connaughton, said the coolest strategy he saw was somebody poured half of a slushie into swirl in an attempt to get it down quicker.

“It seems like everyone got stuck on the slushie,” he said.

The other 11 contestants, including Hamilton Mayor Pat Moeller, Councilman Joel Lauer and runner-up Logan Young, didn’t go down without a fight.

Young said to prepare he “just starved himself” with a strategy to keep taking constant bites, big or small.

The Brian Connaughton started the ice cream eating contest after seeing its success at the 2024 4th of July and from the popularity of the contests around the nation.

“[Last year] was great. We had a great response. We had 10 competitors and they had a lot of fun, and everybody had a lot of fun with it. And so we thought, we’ll try to grow bigger and better. And fortunately, the Butler County Fair let us come out here this year,” Connaughton said.

Unlike last year, though, Brian Connaughton added two more contestants and to win they needed to finish a slushie instead of a banana split.

He said the proceeds go to the Joe Nuxhall Miracle League Field, which hosts its annual Nuxy Bash, a local celebrity softball game, at 7 p.m. Saturday at its Groh Lane field.

“Anybody who registered to be in it and paid the admission fee, we match that and donate it to the Miracle League,” he said.