The world has never been more cruel than it has been to Brant Cracraft of Campbell wrestling and his mission to join the “Ice Cream Hall of Fame.”
According to Cracraft, no athletes out there are more competitive than wrestlers. A person can’t propose a challenge without a group of wrestlers filing in to try and conquer it. Take the following information and throw in an ice cream hall of fame without Cracraft’s photo and you can likely identify the problem.
The few times that weight cutting allows for it, members of the Campbell wrestling team frequent a local ice cream shop by the name of The Scoop At Willow Oak Farms that randomly had a handful of pictures on the wall of people who have mastered ice cream-based challenges. The challenge that caught Cracraft’s eye the most was the one that The Scoop owner Robin Johnson named the Family Challenge.
“On the wall, I’m not going to lie, it was a family with one or two elderly participants on their team,” Cracraft said. “I think with four athletes, especially wrestlers, if we go in there with the right mindset, we’re beating brain freeze and that record. We’ve got to practice but not tell our coach, though, that we’re practicing eating ice cream during the season.”
Best 🗣️ in the business… can we get @ShaneSparksBTN at the Battle at the Barn in @WyoWrestle ? https://t.co/XkHzDcvLTq
— Campbell Wrestling (@GoCamelsWrestle) November 2, 2023
According to Johnson, a local bodybuilder notoriously comes in between diet cycles to mow through a seemingly unhuman amount of ice cream, so much so that she’s begun making challenges based off of his orders. Challenges few could even look at without becoming immediately intimidated.
“He will just come when he is not dieting and he will get like 12 to 18 scoops of ice cream,” Johnson said. “He’s normally the one who will set our records. He’s the one that won the three-foot banana split challenge. He ate it in like 11 minutes, and then we have the family. It was like a huge 12 scoops of ice cream, I think, and a whole bunch of stuff in there. He set the time for seven minutes. He ate it in 7 minutes. So, a family of four could come and see if they can beat his time and I think we had four or five families try and then we had one that ended up eating it in like 8 minutes maybe. They didn’t beat his time, but they came closest to it.”
Cracraft would break down how easy the challenge would be for a team of wrestlers and looks for Johnson to bring back the challenge for one more day in the wrestling offseason. He would almost scientifically explain the scoops per wrestler breakdown and time allotted before claiming it’d be “easy work.”
November 17.
— Wyoming Cowboy Wrestling (@WyoWrestle) October 18, 2023
The Battle In the Barn.
Cowboys in Centennial. @GoCamelsWrestle • @UFCFightPass pic.twitter.com/7ncgZg9UDW
Everybody says they want a fight with Khamzat Chimaev or Jon Jones when they know the schedules won’t line up. Talk is cheap, so Cracraft put his money where his mouth is and rallied the troops straight into The Scoop one day, only to find out they were too late.
“We showed up one day ready to go,” Cracraft said. “We got there and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s only June 20th or July 22nd’ or something and we’re like, ‘Oh dang.’ We came in ready. They almost just had free stuff right there because we were going in to smash that record.”
According to Johnson, the challenge is accessible at all times, including the latest challenge called The Pig Trough. If Cracraft is drawn most to the team aspect of the ice cream challenges, he may be out of luck, but if it’s simply about pushing himself at the dinner table the same way as the wrestling mat, The Scoop may be able to satisfy his itch.
2️⃣Champions, 1️⃣7️⃣ placers, and OVER 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ matches were wrestled by the 🐪’s at the Southeast Open.
— Campbell Wrestling (@GoCamelsWrestle) November 7, 2023
Here are some of the highlights: pic.twitter.com/cLxWzv2cjt
“The Pig Trough is one person and 30 minutes to eat it all,” Johnson said. “It’s got 18 scoops of ice cream, they can pick up to eight flavors, it’s got three whole brownies in it, three whole bananas, four chocolate chip cookies, one slice of pound cake, hot fudge, caramel, whipped cream, cherries, M&M’s and sprinkles. It’s $40 if they can’t eat it, but if they can, they get a free T-shirt and a picture on our wall of fame.”
Johnson, the proud Campbell alum, sympathizes with Cracraft potentially finding more enjoyment in the ice cream challenges with a caravan of Camels than conquering a solo mission. If Cracraft and co. are looking for a real challenge, she’s willing to schedule a head-to-head competition between three of the hungriest Campbell wrestlers and the human garbage disposal himself, “the local bodybuilder.”
“He would love that,” Johnson laughed. “I just have to make sure he’s not on his diet, because he goes on diets for like three weeks and then he goes off and then he totally eats. He’ll eat 12 scoops of ice cream and then he’ll go and order two large pizzas. It’s crazy.”
“You already know we’re down,” Cracraft responded immediately.
Talk about starting the season off right!!!!! Battle at Liberty #recap @ufcfightpass said they were stepping it up this year with production so we did too🎬📽️. pic.twitter.com/z3dZuSRmIW
— Campbell Wrestling (@GoCamelsWrestle) November 5, 2023
Cracraft has never seen “the local bodybuilder” or the mountain of food he’s able to polish off, but has already assembled a team of three he feels could chop down the mythical mammoth of a man.
In the first round, Cracraft selects Conor Maslanek. At 5’11”, 184 pounds and an unspecified eating competition victory under his belt already, the redshirt sophomore was a no brainer first overall pick.
With the next pick, Cracraft would selects Iowa’s own Hagen Heistand. Standing an unassuming 5’8” and 157 pounds, Cracraft is relying on Heistand’s heart and Midwest grit to power them past a man so notoriously hungry that an ice cream shop has changed the menu for him.
The Battle In The Barn Artwork. pic.twitter.com/bujSMTG3vQ
— Wyoming Cowboy Wrestling (@WyoWrestle) October 20, 2023
But what if Cracraft’s trio falls short? Have the last dozen months been a waste? Will there be a rematch? Time can only tell, but Cracraft can’t put himself immediately in the headspace even though he is already putting himself in the captain’s chair. He sought out the challenge, assembled the team and is prepared to take full blame if they come out on the losing end.
“I think this will come down to whether I lose it for us or not,” Cracraft selflessly explained. “On the mat, you can let yourself down with how you believe your performance was, but with this challenge, if I tap out, I know I will feel super guilty for having one of the other guys having to pick up my slack. On the other hand, I haven’t trained to the same extent with eating as I have with wrestling, rather the other way around sometimes. Either way, it will be a fun time and really test the limits of our minds and our stomachs.”
There’s never a mountain high enough to scare Brant Cracraft off. Here’s to his off-season endeavors!
Catch Cracraft and the Campbell Camels at The Battle of the Barn, ONLY on UFC FIGHT PASS!
