Wow, those shoes stink!

As Connor Slocombe’s reign as the kid with the smelliest shoes in Alaska ends this Saturday as yet another annual edition of the Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker regional contest at this weekend’s Bear Paw Festival in Eagle River, he has some advice for the next winner.

“I hope the next winner can have as great as a time in New York as I did,” Slocombe said. “I hope they win and show the other states who is boss.”

Words spoken as a proud champion hailing from the Last Frontier where kid’s shoes tend to get destroyed – one of the reasons the “rotten sneaker” contest has been held in Eagle River for more than 25 consecutive years.

The bulk of the “regional” rotten sneaker contests that seek out the most beaten-up, ickiest, smelliest and stinky kid’s tennis rotate locations throughout the country.

But that’s not the case in Alaska where the Bear Paw Festival has held claim to the contest for more than a quarter of a century sending local kids with seriously messed up shoes to represent the 49th state in a national competition that reeks in a good way.

Slocombe and members of his family travelled to New York City in March of this year for the national competition in which a pair of New Balance tennis shoes he been wearing for the past three years came out as the most rotten, worst kiddo tennis shoes in the country.

His efforts at ruining those shoes paid off with a national win for Slocombe, who had entered the regional competition three years in a row before winning the coveted golden sneaker award at the regional competition held in conjunction with Bear Paw’s Teddy Bear Tea in Chief Alex Park on Fridays of the festival.

The national win in March netted him a two-day trip to New York for his family, tickets to Aladdin, a permanent spot in the Hall of Fumes at Ripley’s Believe it Or Not museum and a check for $2,500 — not to mention a whole lot of bragging rights.

“I think the reason that Alaska kids have shoes that are so bad is because of the environment,” Slocombe said. “They have access to a lot of stinky substances and lots of hikes and rough terrain they wear their shoes in.”

No truer words ever spoken in terms of what Slocombe put his tennis shoes through to prepare them to be the winners of the regional and national contest.

“I did not treat them well,” Slocombe said back in March during a phone call while he and his family were still in New York City basking in the smell of his winning tennis shoes. He and his parents had just finished dinner at Planet Hollywood – something he thought was just as cool as actually winning the competition – as the then sixth-grade Ravenwood Elementary School student detailed exactly what he did to transform a perfectly good pair of tennis shoes in to the winning combination of physical destruction and stink that stayed on the shoes from July 2016 until the end of March of this year.

Repeated exposure to chicken poop, fish guts and use as a brake scraping along the dirt or gravel or pavement while riding his bike on his bike worked together to create an effective strategy that put holes in the front of the shoes that his toes stuck out but left enough of the shoe on the top for smell to remain in place.

Right after the 2016 Bear Paw Festival, officials from the Chugiak-Eagle River Chamber of Commerce, whose job it was to pack up the regional winning shoes in a five-gallon zip bag and put them in an overnight box were pretty confident they were packaging up a national contender.

“It was bad,” Dana Thorp Patterson, the chamber’s executive director, said, regarding the aroma of the shoes last summer during the Bear Paw Festival at which Slocombe won the regional competition. “We were pretty sure we had a contender for the national title.”

So did Ryanne Slocombe, Connor’s mother, who had tolerated her son’s three-year quest to win the regional competition.

“When he wasn’t wearing them, I didn’t even let him keep them in the garage,” Ryanne said back in March. “He kept them out in the shed in the back yard.”

But Ryanne did not have the heart to quash her son’s dream of winning the stinky shoe competition.

When the family moved to Alaska in 2014, Connor learned about the regional competition at the Bear Paw Festival.

Unfortunately, his dreams of winning were dashed that year, but as his mom said, he did not give up.

She decided to not just tolerate, but support her son’s stinky quest.

“He wore them everywhere,” Ryanne told this writer back in March. “Literally, everywhere.”

In 2015, his shoes were certainly looking more destroyed and smelled even worse than the previous year, but the aroma was not enough to win the regional competition.

Connor’s aromatic shoes were again defeated by another local with even more stink.

“He was disappointed,” Ryanne recalled and she noted that Connor had no intentions of giving up even though his father, Reggie, did suggest that perhaps their son’s effort was on its last whiff. But Ryanne intervened, telling her husband to let the destructive effort continue, noting that Connor wasn’t going to give up even though his father, Reggie wanted him to.

“I told Reggie, ‘no, let him continue.’ Besides, I want to go to New York City,” she said with a laugh. “I just admired his determination.”

Third time was indeed the icky and stinky charm for Connor and his shoes. He won the regional Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker contest at Bear Paw in 2016.

His mom was tickled. And thankful.

As she explained, there are only seven regional competitions and for years, the Bear Paw Festival has convinced the Odor-Eaters representatives to sanction the event in Eagle River. The opportunity for her son and other local children is unusual.

Joy Robinson, a Vermont-based media contact for the competition, told Alaska Family Fun that kids from Alaska are fortunate that the representatives at the Chugiak-Eagle River Chamber of Commerce work so diligently to keep one of the regional competitions in Alaska.

Merry Braham, the CER chamber’s special events director who is the unofficial queen of Bear Paw having started the event decades ago with Susie Gorski, former executive director, and Patterson both have an “aw, shucks” attitude toward the accolades, saying their support is just part of the job and part of their commitment to the community.

It takes commitment to even tolerate the smell each year’s winning pair of shoes bring to the chamber office.

Last year, Connor’s shoes stunk up the office for a good day and even after they were packed up. Folks in the office said they could still smell the shoes after they were packaged up and awaiting pick up from an overnight shipping service.

Connor said he expects a strong field of competitors for the 2017 regional competition.

"I think there's going to be a lot of people who want to enter because they think it sounds cool,” he said. “Most of them will probably have shoes that aren't that bad. But there will be a few people that are in it to win it and have really bad shoes. One of them will come out on top."

He will be on hand to congratulate the winner and end his stint as the kid in Alaska with the ickiest shoes. His national reign continues until March 2018 when a new smelly champ is selected.

Author’s Note: Amy Armstrong from Alaska Family Fun will be on hand to document the condition of the shoes Connor Slocombe wears to the “Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest” on Friday, July 14 at 11 a.m. at the Chief Alex Park. According to his mom, the 12-year-old has hit a major growth spurt and his shoes no longer fit long enough for him to destroy them. Amy Armstrong is a Co-Conspirator in Communication with Alaska Family Fun Online Magazine co-owned with Melinda Munson and Gretchen Wehmhoff.