Author: ssmith19

The NCDA has done a lot of growing in the past few years. Not only in size, but in talent as well. While the league may still be dominated by the state of Michigan, it is clear that things are slowly evening out. With these changes come other ones that most people may wish didn’t have to happen. This year held a graduating class of legendary proportions in my personal opinion. With all of these members moving on to bigger and better things, it only seems appropriate to reflect on the past, and look to the future of the league. Continue reading “A Look to the Past, and Ahead to the Future”

Written by Grand Valley’s Kevin Bailey.

The Michigan Dodgeball Cup (MDC) has consistently been one of the premier tournaments in the NCDA’s regular season.  That won’t change this year with five of the six participating teams ranked in the top 12 of the current national standings.  The winner of this event, hosted by Michigan State University, is generally looked at as the favorite to win the national title a few months later.  Here are my predictions for how this important tournament will transpire: Continue reading “Predicting the 2014 MDC”

(Picture coming at some point)

The Ohio conference is the most curious conference the league has this year in my eyes. Coming into the season, a lot was expected of the top two teams, Kent and Ohio State, but not much was expected from the other two schools, Bowling Green and Miami. Though this seems like a top heavy region, BG and Miami do have talent, but not enough to compete with Kent and OSU. Sticking with my theme of of comparing our regions to current NCAA football conferences, I’m stuck between the Big Ten and the Pac-12; for geographical purposes I’ll choose the Big Ten. Here’s my shakedown on how I think the second half of the season will go for these four teams. Continue reading “Spring Semester Regional Preview & Predictions: Ohio”

Coming from the East Coast Conference, the youngest section of the NCDA, a lot of other school’s don’t know much about Towson or the University of Maryland dodgeball clubs, because a lot of people don’t come from our area. There may be a few players at schools like JMU (Chris Hess and PJ Kinkead for example) who hail from the Old Line State, but the majority of us end up staying in state. What makes our rivalry in dodgeball so special is the proximity we live to one another. Before I get into the dodgeball aspect though, I’ll talk about what makes us different from everyone else.

Continue reading “Maryland & Towson: More Than a Rivalry”

This past weekend means we have already played through a quarter of the 2013-14 season. There have already been 45 games played already, including St. Ambrose, Siena Heights, and Davenport’s inducting matches! There have been tournaments played in five different states, at eight different locations. There have been early season surprises, and some teams that are playing exactly how most people expected them to. The only thing that is absolutely certain though, is that we have a long way to go until April. Continue reading “Hitting the Quarter Mark of the Season”

Most of you who will read this article have probably already listened to the most recent Average Joe’s Podcast. For those of you who haven’t, I’m sure you’ve already heard about most, if not all of the inflammatory comments I made during said podcast. Before I go any further, this is not an apology for what I said, this is me realizing I could have used a better set of words and tones to get my point across. If you are still upset with my comments after this I won’t argue with that, but I made the realization that even I didn’t mean for things to come across the way that they did. Continue reading “Clarifying my Own Brash Opinions”

Alright everyone if you are reading this let me say welcome to my first attempt at blogging a live event. I am here at Kent State with CMU, MSU, SVSU, and UK visiting the host school for an all day dodgeball affair. I am here to get the scores of the matches to you as quickly as possibly, while helping ref, do shot clock, and other things. If you want to keep up with me please bear with me if I take a while to get scores up, I am not sure how long these games will take. Other than that, here we go! Continue reading “Summit Street Slugfest: As Close to Live Scoring as Possible”

Dodgeball is back this weekend people! Kent State, last year’s #1 seed at Nationals, is hosting the first tournament of the year, hoping to get off to a fast start. They’ve got plenty of stiff competition coming to town with the 2013 runner-up Michigan State, 2012 National Champion Saginaw Valley State, 2011 National Champion Central Michigan, and powerhouse Kentucky coming to town. For those wondering who to pick to win this tournament, I’ll be listing plenty of reasons for you to pick any of the teams above. I’ll even tell you my personal prediction. Continue reading “Kent State Tournament Preview & Prediction *UPDATED*”

Last year was a bit of a surprise year for the Ohio State Buckeyes. The team was very young, and very inexperienced in NCDA play. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Buckeyes showed up to Sunday at nationals and gave host Kentucky the game of their lives in the second round. I recently talked with head boss man Ryan Carlton to ask him about his team, his expectations, and his dancing abilities. Continue reading “2013-14 Season Preview: Ohio State”