At exactly 2:40 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 25, two pies made direct contact with the face of President Ron Cole, ’87, sending whipped cream and pie crust flying across the Gator Quad.

“It was a double pie hit, (my) first experience with a double pie hit, smothered on both sides of the head,” Cole said, as he wiped dessert off his face with his sweater. “It was very quiet and then it became very tasty.”

It was the afternoon of Gator Day and the pieing of the president served as the capstone moment for the Student Athletic Advisory Committee’s Athlete Field Day.

“We wanted to promote not only our club, but school spirit in general,” said SAAC Event Coordinator Sabrina Rodriguez, ’25, at the close of the event. “A lot of people in the beginning really turned out and showed up, and everybody is still here and they’re having a great time. I’m just happy overall.”

SAAC Co-President Ella Swan, ’23, added that Cole was very open to participating.

“We went to his office and we were like, ‘hey, this is SAAC, this is our club, we want to bring more awareness (to athletics)’ … and he said we could pie him!” Swan said. “That shows that, you know, our president is involved with the students and helped us with this.”

Rodriguez, who delivered the pastry payload to Cole’s face along with Swan, was not even sure that the president would agree to take a pie to the face for the event.

“I was not expecting him to say yes,” Rodriguez said. “We were actually very hesitant to ask him in general, but he’s very, very friendly, he’s very fun, and I’m just happy he agreed to it.”

Cole said that this was not the first time he had faced the business end of a sweet treat in his Allegheny career.

“When I was teaching Geology, we had a few events where I had the pleasure of eating pie off my face,” Cole said. “It was my first double-pie hit though.”

SAAC’s mission is to strengthen connections between the wider campus community and the college’s athletic teams. Though many in the club’s leadership are athletes themselves, students from beyond Allegheny’s 21 varsity teams are encouraged to join.

“If (students) ever want to come to a meeting and support your athletes on campus, just please come to any of our events in the next year,” Rodriguez said.

On the quad, attendees enjoyed free pizza and played lawn games, including cornhole, spikeball, tug-of-war and egg toss.

In egg toss, players line up opposite a partner and throw an egg back and forth, with the last team to not drop and break their egg declared the winners. However, after every completed toss, one of the two partners takes a step back, lengthening the distance of each throw.

In one round of egg toss, Jean-Arlette Legrand, ’24, and Chance Hager, ’26, mounted an impressive streak of safe egg throws. By the time their egg met its inevitable end splattered across the sidewalk, Legrand was standing near the picnic tables outside McKinley’s and Hager was stationed near the middle of the quad — a distance of more than 20 feet.

While most broken eggs shattered on sidewalks, a few students found themselves sporting the sticky yellow of egg yolk on their arms and shirts as an egg was thrown too hard or caught too firmly.

Some students tested their strength against each other in tug-of-war, while others formed teams for spikeball and cornhole.

“It’s pretty fun so far, yeah,” said Alexys Paola, ’26, midway through a spikeball match. “I’m getting a good sweat in.”

Paola was at the event with his roommate, Brooklaun Gordon, ’26, who also liked the opportunity to get out and meet other students.

“I feel like this is a good way to bring together the Allegheny community, have fun, have some food together,” Gordon said.

Apart from the lawn games, students could enter a raffle to win either GFC gift cards or a small speaker.

Paola and Gordon entered the raffle together to double their chances of winning.

“If I don’t win the speaker and (Paola) does, it’s okay, because we’re roommates,” Gordon said.