How many cheesesteaks can 15 men in Delco eat in 10 minutes? A competition on National Cheesesteak Day sought to find out.

The competitors had 10 minutes.

To try to win gift cards, cash, and a championship belt. To give their all to celebrate a national day of regional pride. To eat as many cheesesteaks as they could stuff in their faces.

Dozens of spectators at the Marple Public House restaurant in Delaware County watched with various amounts of alarm and awe as 15 men from as close as Broomall and as far as South Carolina marked National Cheesesteak Day on Sunday by filling themselves with the sandwiches at the fifth annual Cheesesteak Bowl.

One competitor brought earbuds to help him. Another brought a bottle of antacid tablets.

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Contestants wolfed down a range of almost one to seven-and-a-half of Delco Steaks’ Classic Delcos: 12-inch cheesesteaks with 10 ounces of rib eye and Cooper Sharp cheese on seeded Carangi rolls. Nick Reynolds, owner of Delco Steaks and Marple Public House, said he saw a void when WIP’s Wing Bowl ended after the 2018 event.

“We figured, why not a Cheesesteak Bowl?” he said. “Cheesesteaks are the most iconic food from this area, so we might as well have that.”

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Proceeds from the event and cheesesteaks ordered on Sunday are going to two foundations. The HEADStrong Foundation, a Delaware County-based nonprofit, supports the families of people with cancer. And Luciano’s Light Foundation, an organization established in memory of Reynolds’ son Luciano, who died last May and would have turned 3 on March 26, aids grieving families. A banner with a photo of the baby holding a cheesesteak hung on a brick wall behind the contestants as they ate.

In the amateur round of 11 eaters, Tony Volpe of Clifton Heights came in third place by eating just over two cheesesteaks. As he sat eating his third after the clock ran out and he got his $100 gift card, he gestured down the line of tables to his fellow competitors’ leftovers and said, “I’ll eat everybody’s cheesesteaks.”

“I was hungry. And I figure for [the entrance fee of] $20, it’s lunch,” Volpe, 47, said. “Where you gonna get three cheesesteaks for $20? Nowhere.”

He didn’t have much of a strategy going into the competition — his first Cheesesteak Bowl. “I just went to town,” he said.

Volpe admitted the contest was harder than he thought it’d be.

Rob McGee, a soft-spoken 34-year-old New Yorker, won the amateur round by eating three cheesesteaks that he described as “chewy.” Preparing for the contest was the first time he’d ever eaten a cheesesteak, he said. On Sunday, “I could taste a little bit. The cheese, definitely,” he said.

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Dan Kennedy of West Decatur in central Pennsylvania beat three other competitors to win the professional eater round for the fourth year, eating seven-and-a-half cheesesteaks.

“I think those are around, like, a pound a piece or so,” said Kennedy, 41. “So with the water and stuff, I probably ate like 15 pounds.”

It got him another championship belt and $1,000 in cash but was just short of his record of eight sandwiches, which he attributed to a change in the bread.

“The biggest thing is to just try to get into a rhythm and just keep repeating that,” he said.

And the secret to being a four-time cheesesteak eating champion? “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess you have to have an insatiable love for meat and cheese.”

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Sitting on a bar stool in front of Kennedy was one of his biggest supporters, Barbara Shalles of Broomall, who doesn’t know him personally but has been to every Cheesesteak Bowl except one.

Shalles, 61, cheered him on and made sure the contest announcer, restaurant owner Reynolds’ brother Steve, knew when Kennedy had finished a sandwich and was moving on to the next. Hers was one of the loudest voices in the crowded room counting down the last seconds of the contest. When Kennedy won, she chanted, “Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

“I want to go hug him,” Shalles said. Instead, she reached across a table to shake his hand and returned to her stool, waving at the people around her. “I got cheesesteak hand!”

She joked that Kennedy must have one hollow leg where he stores the sandwiches. Although she said she loves Delco Steaks, the most she can eat is half of one footlong cheesesteak.

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A good chunk of the spectators at the competition were family and friends of Frank Duff of Collingdale, who didn’t win the eating part but won a prize for “best entourage.”

“It was all hype. I used their energy to make it happen for me,” Duff said. He managed to eat two cheesesteaks. “It’s a lot. It’s not five, but …”

Besides the cheesesteaks, contestants and spectators said they were at the Cheesesteak Bowl to support the charitable foundations. Just before dinnertime on Sunday, the event had raised more than $850, and organizers expected to reach $1,000.