The co-ed team, “The Chris Brown Beat Down,” the men’s team, “Thunder and Lightning Part two,” and the women’s team, “Under Pressure” won Georgia Southern University’s 2012 Iron Eagle competition on Friday.

The Iron Eagle, hosted by GSU’s Southern Adventures, is an event that not only consists of a challenge but a costume contest, prizes and raffles for participants and volunteers.

The challenge requires two players per team and the team can participate in one of the three challenge heats either, men’s, women’s or co-ed. The challenge consists of running, biking and various fun mystery events.

It’s really fun. You can do this if you’re competitive or not. Any fitness level can participate, and it’s still going to be a good time, Amanda Kepshire, senior public relations major and Jenny Dickson, biology graduate student, said.

The course stretches throughout the campus and has about four miles of biking and three miles of running broken up in between eight mystery events, Southern Adventures graduate assistant Matthew Graham said.

The event boasted a large turnout for the 30 members of the Southern Adventures staff and the 40 volunteers that attended to help and have some fun.

“We reached our goal of team sign-ups. I just wanted to beat last year’s total, and we did do that,” Graham said.

Fifty teams signed up, and due to unforeseen circumstances about 45 or 46 teams actually ran the event.

The mystery events change every year, and this year they consisted of things such as grabbing a flag while going down a slip-n-slide, kayaking across the lake using only a rope and carrying a teammate on your back while blindfolded and being guided through a course simultaneously collecting cans.

Kepshire could not fathom how the volunteers and the Southern Adventures staff came up with the mystery events, which she deemed very exciting.

Louis Turnbull, graduate student applied engineering master, wanted to thank the Southern Adventures staff for making the course better and better every year.

“It’s awesome. This has been my sixth season. I started this race when it first started during my undergrad years. This year I had to finish it off with a final win,” Turnbull, co-winner of the men’s heat, said.

The fun did not stop when the challenge ended. There were prizes and raffles handed out at the banquet following the challenge. There was even a costume contest.

The names of the teams and their costumes add a unique and intriguing element to the Iron Eagle. For example some team names were “Falling With Style,” “The Almost Naked Ladies” and “The Drag Racers.”

The crowd votes on the costumes of the participants. The team that receives the loudest and most cheers wins.

“The Nutcrackers,” a co-ed contest participant, won the costume contest dressed in tutus.

Graham said, “It was a really good time. We had a lot of really energetic funny entertaining teams this year. I think it went really smoothly. We had some sweet prizes and some delicious food.”