Chris Moran | Beta Beta Chapter
The group started at 4 p.m. Sept. 4 and went until 4 p.m. on Sunday to break the world record for the longest marathon in a bouncy castle for a team. The previous record recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records was 39 hours, held by a team in England of eight bouncers.
To divide the workload, the brothers split the 48 hours into one-hour shifts for each of the eight brothers on the designated jumping team: Tyler Philolius, Chris Moran, Mason Moreau, Johnathon Fivecoat, Allan Murphy, Tyler Benthal, Blake Gershowitz and Bobby Reimertz. For every hour, one of these brothers was inside the bouncy castle.
“Many times we felt like quitting, but in the end we bared through it and accomplished our goal,” Blake Gershowitz said. “I still can’t believe we did it. Everyone jumped for at least six hours each, afterwards all I wanted to do was sleep.”
Chris Moran, philanthropy chair of the fraternity, said the primary source of inspiration for this attempt came from graduate, Bryant Phillips, who broke his own world record in 2013 by assembling Florida Southern students and faculty in order to break the record for the most high-fives in a single minute. Bryant Phillips is an alumnus of Pi Kappa Phi.
“We had a brother who broke a world record on campus a few years back,” Moran said. “He inspired us to want to break a record together as a chapter. He still lives in Lakeland and has been involved in supporting us over this record breaking attempt.”