With 53 Veishea tournaments taking place this year, 2012 tournament co-chairmen Brian Capesius and Jake Smith have a lot on their plate.

However, they said they’re up to the challenge — and their committee even decided to add 15 new events this year that are available to all students to take part in. New events include dodgeball, kickball and a cherry pie-eating contest.

The brand new cherry pie-eating contest will take place at noon Friday on Central Campus. The event pairs with the Veishea cherry pie bake sale tradition that is run by ISU students in the hotel, restaurant and institution management department, who make around 8,000 cherry pies for the festival.

Five-on-five men’s basketball and flag football are returning favorites this year. Smith said that because of the events’ overwhelming popularity, they have turned the events into more of a league this year with multiple games taking place over a few weeks.

Another popular tournament hosted during Veishea is knockout. For those unaware, knockout is a basketball game in which participants line up and if the trailing player makes a shot before the leading player, the leading player is eliminated. Last one standing wins.

Last year, ISU students attempted to break the knockout world record. Cyclone students reached their goal one basket at a time with 360 total participants. Yet, only a few months after the event, another group overcame Iowa State with only 10 more players.

“Breaking the knockout world record is our biggest goal this year,” Smith said. “We want to get 1,000 participants and smash the record.”

The co-chairmen’s goal is to make the tournament an event that ISU students can get excited about.

Registration for each tournament can be done online on an individual or group basis (depending upon the event). Many of the events are free, however, there are several tournaments that have a small entrance fee.