Chasing the tag world record

The key to Aaron Jones’ survival were the Adidas cleats on his feet.

Those shoes were what left the fourth-year University of Virginia student as the last target moving Friday in an attempt to set a Guinness world record for fielding the largest game of tag.

That, and he’s a member of UVa’s cross country club.

Put on by the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, the attempt needed, Guinness said, 250 people to set a record, but came up about 100 scrambling people short. Which made the “I set a world record with UVa and ATO” T-shirts people sported a bit premature.

But Jonathon Wood, a fourth-year student, did his part — becoming the only person to play tag button-downed in a suit, tie and Bostonian dress shoes.

Roughly 40 minutes prior to being eliminated, Wood was at the McIntire School of Commerce giving a presentation to Dominion Virginia Power executives.

“It’s not fair because they singled me out as the ‘tie guy,’” Wood said after walking off the muddied field.

Although it took longer to get Wood than it did Amy Wicks-Horn, who said the designated taggers took it easier on her at first because she’s “older” but who was eliminated nonetheless.

UVa’s children’s hospital, where Wicks-Horn is the director of annual giving, came away from the event with at least $700 raised by the 140 people who paid $5 apiece to participate. The final money total was not immediately available.

It took a pack of four cross-country-club taggers about 35 minutes to winnow a piece of UVa’s Nameless Field down to Jones.

In that time the game’s arena, cordoned off by yellow caution tape, was cut down several times, dwindling from the size of a high-school baseball field to roughly that of a basketball court.

And with that the cat herding became easier for the taggers as targets became more elusive, until the taggers began hunting as a pack. Which led them to Scott Cathcart, 12, and Jack Thomas, 13, who bested the mostly college-student crowd to become part of the final five alive.

ATO Treasurer John Sweeney said the fraternity would likely try to set the record — which does not yet exist — next year.