Tooele teen out-stinks the competition

Sitting in her living room in Tooele, a few days before she won the contest for the stinkiest shoes in America, 13-year-old Katharine Tuck seemed quietly confident. Yes, she admitted, the kids at Clark N. Johnsen Junior High School had tried to discourage her. But she had not been swayed from her quest.

"A girl today told me I needed to get new shoes," Katharine said. She replied that she had to keep wearing this pair — scuffing them and forgoing socks to make them even rattier — because on March 20 she'd be taking part in a national contest, the 32nd annual Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest. Katharine also told her classmate, "The winner gets $2,500."

When she mentioned the money, Katharine said, the girl became more respectful of the beat-up Nikes, which recently split from their soles and had to be duct-taped.

And Tuesday, Katharine's shoes triumphed. They have now been inducted into the "National Hall of Fumes."

Katharine's tale of glory begins two years ago, when her family moved to Utah from Texas and decided to have a day of family fun at the Utah State Fair. That's when she and her brothers first learned of the Odor-Eaters contest. They entered the shoes they had on that day but did not win.

Katharine decided to work on her shoes' smelliness and scruffy appearance, and come back to the state fair in the fall of 2006. Her father, Michael, says this may seem like an odd goal for an otherwise clean girl. "But," he says, "it is something she can win." And Katharine, he says, is "extremely, extremely competitive."

Her mother, Paula, notes that Katharine is an honor student and that she followed the rules of the contest quite scrupulously. Katharine knew her shoes would be judged on not just smell but on appearance of tongue, soles, laces, eyelets and the like. And she knew she could not take a knife or a saw to the shoes, that she had to let them wear out by doing what kids her age would naturally do.

So she rode her bike, dragging her toes into the stop, as kids will do. And she helped her mom in the garden, and the shoes got muddy and wet. And she wore them to school, day after day, without socks. And who knows, she may even have strolled the shores of the Great Salt Lake, delicately dipping her feet into the decaying brine shrimp.

Last fall, at the Utah State Fair, Katharine came in first on the local level. Her younger brother Lane took second place.

Katharine won $250 that day, as well as an invitation for herself and a parent to take an all-expense-paid trip to Vermont to stay at a resort in Stowe, to see the local sights and take part in the national contest.