NHS Breaks Guinness World Record For Tire Rolling

By Susan Coney

Newtown High School students Mike Rambone, Chris Nuelle, and Pete Oggeri met with phenomenal success last Saturday when a fundraising event that the friends organized managed to break a world record. The three friends planned, organized, and marketed the event, which set the Guinness World Record for The Most People Simultaneously Rolling Tires.

The current world record stood at 237 tires being rolled at the same time. Saturday’s event broke the record when 266 people showed up to participate.

One of the student organizers, Chris Nuelle, said, “We were pretty excited and glad that it turned out so well. We weren’t sure if we were going to get enough people then when it happened we were so pumped! We are still in awe of the whole thing.”

Initially the number of participants entered showed that they lacked about 40 people. The organizers waited patiently, hoping that more participants would arrive and eventually recruited spectators and athletes that were playing on adjacent ball fields at the high school to bring up the numbers and ensure a record-breaking turnout.

The students had done their marketing homework by promoting the upcoming event in The Newtown Bee, by distributing flyers, and placing clever signs attached to tires placed strategically around Newtown advertising the upcoming event.

In order to be considered a legitimate world record, certain guidelines had to be followed. The entire event was documented on video to be sent to the Guinness headquarters. All participants had to be registered and given an identification number. The organizers stressed that it was not a race. There was no time limit so participants were encouraged to go slow and take their time. No one could drop a tire or stop rolling without being disqualified. Every participant had to roll the tire a total of 100 meters without stopping and had to stay on the course.

The event brought out young and old, athletes and the athletically challenged in a common goal to break a world record and raise funds for a worthy cause. Each participant paid a $5 entry fee, which covered the admission and a tire to roll. Water, snacks, and T-shirts printed up by Vellone Enterprises, which sold for $6 each also helped to raise funds. The event raised an impressive $1,674 to be donated to cancer research.

Volunteers Diana Grimaldi, Laura Schroeder, Alexa Feldman, Erin Clark, Ali Legros, and Gina Bloshuk welcomed and registered the participants and instructed them on the rules of the event. Pre-event activities such as games and tire rolling races complete with prizes helped keep the younger crowd occupied while waiting for the actual contest to begin.

Prior to the contest guidance counselor Jeff Tolson said, “These kids are highly organized. The kids are running this event, I am just sitting back and relaxing. Hopefully they will have the numbers to break the record; if not at least they’ll have a big, fat check for the American Cancer Society.”

Robin Rambone, mother of one of the organizers, said that the boys had more than 500 tires stacked in their yard courtesy of Town Fair Tire. “The boys would bring a few tires over in their cars every day after school for weeks until they got them all over to the high school,” she laughed.

What is amazing about this story is that three boys, who initially started off in the school library browsing through a recent publication of The Guinness Book of World Records, almost as a lark decided to challenge themselves to take action and to put their plan into effect. At the end of the event, their efforts paid off and a new world record was achieved as well as a sizable donation was raised to assist in cancer research.