IT and Chili: Heating up Hoyt Hall in 2026
Congratulations to Patrick Hawk for winning this year's IT chili cook-off!
IT and Chili: Heating up Hoyt Hall in 2026
This past Tuesday, IT Services once again came together to celebrate friendship, camaraderie, and love of food with the eighth annual IT Services Chili Cook-off.
The competition was fierce, the spice level elevated, and the entertainment supreme. Six challengers (IT foodies) entered the ring (the Hoyt second-floor breakroom) to battle for glory (the traveling golden-ladle trophy) and acclaim (yeah, just that… acclaim).
The spots up for grabs: First place, second place, and People’s Choice. The first-place trophy is a time-honored wooden plaque with a golden ladle that has celebrated its share of spicy chili winners over the years. The winner of second place gets to take home a silver ladle, and the People’s Choice trophy is always a fun bowl of questionable origin and design. Over the years we have had striped bowls, gaudy bowls with shiny rims, wooden monstrosities, and now this golden piece.
Emcee extraordinaire elicits elation and enjoyment
The event was punctuated by a particularly spectacular performance from our emcee, senior application analyst Sofia Olaya. Wielding a large soup ladle as a microphone, she regaled her captive audience with fun facts about the origins of chili, the hard-and-fast rules of what constitutes chili in Texas, and lots of snark.
Sofia kept the conversation lively and brought smiles to the faces of the participants and judges alike. To think we’ve had an extrovert in our midst this whole time…
(Hot tip: You can find some of these fun facts and more in her video about Cincinnati Chili!)
Without further ado…
The winners!
The judges for this event had their work cut out for them. These brave souls included: Randy Hollowell (who has judged all eight IT chili competitions), Ruowei Fischer, Matt Mauller, David Carter, and Zach Resatar (guest judge from EMSS). They were asked to evaluate each chili based on five different criteria: aroma, color, taste, texture/consistency, and aftertaste/bite. The judging was done blind, meaning they didn’t know who had submitted each chili.
Each judge gave a numerical score, some left comments for the chefs, and then the scores were tallied!
Senior application analyst Joe Mills took home both second place and the People’s Choice trophy with his offering.
And, surprising everyone and no one, huge congratulations to information security analyst Patrick Hawk for winning the golden-ladle first place trophy! This will be the third (consecutive!) time his name is inscribed on the back of the traveling plaque—and this also means we’ll be sending him to the university-wide Fire & Ice Chili Challenge in March!
Congratulations and good luck, Patrick!