Wishing the few clouds in the sky would roll past the sun so the beads of sweat rolling down your neck could cool, you take another nibble. The sounds of American rock ‘n’ roll, sizzling fryers and family chatter fade into one homogenized background noise as your tongue becomes your primary sensory mechanism. It’s sweet. It’s spicy. It has tang. It’s drizzling on the sidewalk from the corners of your mouth. It’s The Great International Chicken Wing Society’s Chicken Wing Cook-Off.

The eighth annualcook-off is happening July 3, 4 and 5 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Baldini’s Sports Casino located at 865 S. Rock Blvd. in Sparks.

“This year, we are hoping it will be bigger than ever with more than 60,000 people wiping chicken wings off their face this Fourth of July weekend,” said Willie Davison, the President of the Great International Chicken Wing Society.

Contestants from around the country will arrive at Baldini’s and almost everything will be set up for them. The Chicken Wing Society provides the wings, the oil, the fryers, the napkins, the tables, the chairs and anything else the contestants need, except the sauce.

“It’s all about the sauce,” Davison said. “That’s why we try to level the playing field and give the cookers less to worry about. We want the focus on the sauce.”

There will be a lot of sauce to taste at the cook-off and each contestant is allotted 10 “chicken hawk” tasters each day to judge all the competitors wings. At the end of the event, four of the top-ranked kitchens will be acknowledged.

“For this reason, we use a smaller wing and we ask that all contestants have a $2 taster on their menu,” Davison said.

The wing orders that most vendors serve range between $2 for a taster of four wings and $9 for a basket of up to 20 wings.

Every year there are new competitors and a few returning favorites like locals Carolina Kitchen and Texas Roadhouse from Sparks. Eventually, as the name of the society implies, Davison would like to gain international appeal.

“My biggest problem has been getting people to commit to return so that I can get more people interested in traveling to us,” Davison said. “Everybody knows that I love this community, but I’d really like this to become an international event.”

Davison founded Hot August Nights and has hosted many successful events in the Reno-Sparks area within the last two decades. The chicken wing cook-off began in 2002 at the Hilton, now the Grand Sierra Resort, where more than 80,000 wings were cooked and served for 12,000 people during the two-day event. During the last seven years, the event has more than tripled in size, added a day and switched locations.

“We’ve been holding the event in downtown Reno for a few years now, but with some of the revamping that they did to the streets I felt like the cook-off might not have enough room,” Davison said. “We’ve got all sorts of room here at Baldini’s.”

The chicken wing cook-off has also been held in Deadwood, S.D.; Olympia, Wash.; Butte, Mont.; St. George, Utah and Las Vegas.