On a cold Sunday afternoon, Eric James Sarich was hanging out in his dorm room when his roommate said ‘let’s go do a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament.

About an hour later he beat out 116 contestants with a final play of scissors against his opponent who used paper.

“I figure it’s mostly luck. I threw out scissors most of the time, but most of the guys didn’t catch on,” said Sarich, a sophomore in health and science.

The First Annual World Series of Rock, Paper, Scissors kicked off Homecoming Week yesterday on the South Oval at 3 p.m.

Scott Fry, vice president of Romophos, the group sponsoring the event, said he is still waiting to hear back from Guinness World Records, but with 117 participants, he is confident that the record is broken because this was the first tournament of its kind approved by Guinness.

“The President and I, Stan Gozur, were talking about it, and the battle of the bands is only once a year, but we kind of wanted to raise more money and create more awareness, and have a good time,” said Fry, a sophomore in finance and economics. “So we decided to do a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament because we’re the Romophos Rocks.”

Romophos, a student honorary-based leadership group, sponsored the event in order to raise more money for the Boy and Girls Club of Columbus and to get the members and the community active, Fry said.

Founders of Romophos were unable to settle on a creative name for the organization, so they decide to spell “sophomore” backwards. Called the Romophos Rocks, there is a mascot on the South Oval that is named after Romophos.

“Annually we do the battle of the bands at Newport, all the money that we raise for that goes to the Boys and Girls Club, and we just want to add to that,” Fry said. “It kind of started out as a joke. I said to my parents, ‘wouldn’t it be funny if we tried for the world record?’ So we applied for Guinness, and Guinness has approved the tournament.”

When Fry applied to set a record at Guinness, there was no record, even though there have been Rock, Paper, Scissors tournaments before.

Upon entering the tournament, contestants signed a waver at the entrance and were either assigned a partner or played against someone they came with. Then they walked into a fenced-off section A and played someone, while a referee watched. The winner moved on to block B where they played another person. If they kept winning they advanced through block F, where the winner would come back for the finals. The losers were given a consolation prize of a free Coke product and were free to roam around the “fun gate” where CD101 was playing.

At 4:30 p.m., the gates were closed for new contestants and the finals began. Throughout the tournament Sarich was listening to his iPod, and when he won he chose an iPod for his prize instead of a replica Ohio State football jersey.

“I chose the iPod because mine is pretty old school, and I have a jersey and it’s worth a lot more,” Sarich said.