From The Press of Atlantic City — It was a medieval battle and a physics junkie’s dream come true. Seven homemade catapults and trebuchets, firing one after another.

“Fire in the hole!” yell John Norcross and teammate Tom Burns. “3…2…1…”

Norcross and Burns, known as team Wartwig, pull a string and the arm of their machine flips around like a miniaturized roller coaster, shooting a pumpkin into orbit. You follow the trajectory with your eyes, but after 500 or 600 feet you lose track of the pumpkin. So do the official scorers riding around the field on ATVs. We find out later that it landed out of bounds, the seeds and pulp splattered along a road 761 feet away.

What a way to build tradition.

The hurl marked the start of the first-ever New Jersey Punkin Hurling Championship, held this weekend at Butterhof’s Shady Brook Farm in Mullica Township. The finals start at 10 this morning.

Glenn Battschinger designed this competition after the World Championship Punkin Chunkin Festival, which takes place ever year in Bridgeville, Del. Battschinger is troop leader for Boy Scout Troop 634, also known as the Pineland Punkin Chunkers. The troop competed in Delaware last year, but Battschinger wanted Atlantic County to have its own contest.

“At the World Championship you see a lot of older guys, but you need children to represent this and carry it forward,” he said. “It’s important to see these younger teams working together and achieving their goals.”

Members of Troop 634 worked together to build two trebuchets, projectile-flinging weapons with a sling and arm that date to Egyptian times. The troop’s weapon blasted pumpkins 480 and 444 feet. Team Pack 87 from Somers Point shot a pumpkin 343 feet.

Norcross and Burns, a Rowan University engineering student, built a trebuchet with a floating axle, and their second chuck traveled 765 feet – inbounds, so it counts.

Each group used a different design and different materials for the championship. One team filled a garbage can with mixer sand and buoyed the can with weightlifting plates for their counterweight. Others used sand bags or concrete blocks to give their machine an edge.

“The teams talks some trash, but when you show up with your machine in the morning all your secrets are gone, and then it’s just a matter of seeing how far you can make a pumpkin fly,” Battschinger said.

Beyond handiwork, it’s also important to pick the right pumpkins, Burns said. They need to be smooth and round – not the type you would carve into a jack-o-lantern, but the type you would arrange on a windowsill.

Of course, these pumpkins will all have the same fate… Splat.

A couple of hundred people stop to watch. Most are family members and friends of the competitors. A handful of onlookers park on the side of the road and lean against a fence to watch.

“For the first time for this event, this is a great turnout,” Norcross said. “It’s a good start, and if you get some more teams you’ll need a bigger field next time.”