Nationals 2011… CMU!

Lifted from Aleks Bomis’ [MSU Alum] Facebook

I’m smiling ear to ear about dodgeball this week. I’m smiling because the best run tournament in College Dodgeball’s seven years of existence took place this past weekend.

And I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.

I’ve always been pretty concerned about where the organization was headed, what it was working towards. I invested a lot of time in it. It and the people who comprise it will forever be a part of me. The leadership and development that went on in the first few years got me accepted into a Top 20 MBA program and Top 100 law school. I’m proud of that and always will be. Dodgeball is on my resume, and I will unabashedly tell interviewers where it’s at and how it got started. Operations, recruitment, administration, marketing – it sounds silly (and it is), but when you add up the manpower and the revenue required to operate the National Tournament (think of all the hotel money), that’s a major accomplishment that most young people don’t have. The group means a lot to me.

I guess that’s probably why I was less than happy with the way things seemed to be headed in the NCDA last year. Things got more competitive and tense, abuse of officials led to officials not caring led to abuse of officials, the concept of winning seemed to outpace the concept of playing this ridiculous game developed by sadistic gym teachers… maybe it’s that I’m from Michigan where the more determined teams and players are, I don’t know. In any case, it eventually came to a head and I thought, “To hell with it. If this is how it’s going to be, I’m out.” That’s when a nice thing happened: the NCDA moved on without much disruption. From rules administration to tournament operations to keeping the peace or anything else, there’s not one thing where I am or would be indispensable. In the early days there weren’t many people committed to the idea of making this crazy idea work. Most of it fell to me. Not that I minded it – heck, it was more to add to my resume. Now there are schools from all over the country and plenty of people each year who have both the skill set and the desire to keep this going. College Dodgeball has reached critical mass. No situation exists today where I’d think “Oh, I need to handle that.” And if you’re not needed, well, you’re probably not wanted either. Maybe the saying “familiarity breeds contempt” has some truth to it. You either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Hey, could’ve been worse – I might’ve been forced out like Mubarak in Egypt.

I’ll cut the maudlin and just line up a few thoughts I wish I had the time or forethought to say to people when I see them in person.

Let’s take the big one first: To the teams that think I hate them – I don’t. Sure, you may have a couple current or former players I don’t or didn’t care for, but nine times out of ten a negative remark about them was immediately followed with “I don’t get it, the rest of ’em seem like nice guys.” Same applies in reverse, people can dislike me and like Team MSU in general. It always comes down to people.

I’ve never tried to screw a team over as an official. I’ll go a step further with that: I don’t think any official has ever intentionally tried to fix a dodgeball game played between grown men and women. Have I ever made remarks to the contrary? Darn straight. The majority of people reading this have as well, however, so don’t act surprised that The Old Man shoots his mouth off like everybody else. Doesn’t it make it right, and for that I apologize.

Sometimes you (I) need to just shut up and let others try things instead of going “No no, I know better, do it this way.” For example, there might be a skills competition or an all-star game or something else that makes this whole idea better.

Last, and certainly not least, the leadership you all collectively show is phenomenal. That’s the one concept I have difficulty trying to explain to outsiders – that college kids will put time, effort, and thought into how to better organize the activity of striking each other with vulcanized rubber. There are many sport club leagues in existence. Few have as solid a base as the NCDA. None are wholly student-operated.

As for where this takes me from here, I dunno. I’d like to put together an alumni production team to shoot and commentate games in Michigan and maybe Ohio. That’s one area where I do have a leg up on most of the NCDA – being an MSU Athletics cameraman for three years has its benefits beyond the field pass. Eh, we’ll see what happens next year. The facilities have gotten progressively better each year, and a brand new Ryder Center ought to be a great tournament site in 2012.

Now if someone can just start a team at the University of Michigan I could die happy…

Reply, 13 April 2011
Greg Trippiedi [GVSU]

I was kind of where Bomis was a year ago, didn’t know where the NCDA was headed and didn’t know whether the Michigan teams would be able to turn over their rosters entirely and remain competitive. GVSU’s club is about 40% of the size of when I first got there, but the sheer size of the club and the fan base has proven to the only thing unsustainable about it. What we accomplished this year was a complete turnover of the old guard to a new team built almost entirely of Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshman. There’s no doubt in my mind that if GVSU played zero seniors next season (and our three or four best players will probably be seniors), they would still be first or second in the state of Michigan, and that means we’ve done our job to turn the program over away from players who won the four championships. To bring home the hardware in a transitional year would have been great, but we still exceeded all of our own expectations, except that one.

The work that Josh and Felix (and everyone, really) have done down at WKU has made all the difference. The first time they ever played us (Oct. 2007, @UK), Felix was still in high school, and their club was two months old and we were at the very peak of our dominance as a program. It was hard to imagine after that game what they would do with that program, but really, the NCDA was pretty close to becoming a regional thing instead of a national one, and I have to credit Western Kentucky exclusively for changing that course. If this years nationals is the point at which we look back at non-Michigan teams starting their run of becoming title contenders, so much the better. Kentucky looks like it can become a college dodgeball hotbed. UofL isn’t good right now, but they have a much better chance of becoming good with WKU and UK around them to play against.

If someday, Kentucky and Michigan are two regions where all the teams are really good, then the NCDA can matter on a national level. For any team east of the Mississippi River, a quality opponent would never be more than a few hours away. A lot has changed in a year, and it’s pretty much all been very promising.

WIU Round Robin

MACOMB – DePaul Dodgeball joined Western Kentucky and Wisconsin Platteville for a Round Robin hosted by Western Illinois on October 23.

This week was a monster for DePaul. In preparing for our matches we had to weed 17 people of our 40 plus regular ballers. The greater majority of our veterans have been injured in non dodgeball related injuries, while others had work and all the right excuses. Then on the Wednesday before, one of our drivers texted us and said he broke his collarbone. By our Thursday dodgeball night, we had barely enough car space for 14 players, bringing just five people with tournament experience. And I got my neighbor’s bike was stolen on Tuesday.

We received our club shirts just a week before travel, and with no free time I managed to heat-press the traveling shirts so we might look like a team. Kevin Hill managed to get the waivers in, and I managed to take two of my cars to fill the space left by our other driver’s injury.

We ended up leaving only 15 minutes late, a small record for DePaul Dodgeball.  But after 60 minutes of driving in the rain, Kevin’s car suffered a blown out tire near Ottawa, IL. He had to wait more than two hours for a new tire to be installed. In the mean time, 8 members of the team continued onto Western. By this time, Western and the rest of the teams had already started playing. We made a small pit stop, and the Chicago Eight decided to keep going as we were more than half-way there.

Arriving an hour or two late, DePaul is forced to play three matches in a row, with only 8 people for the first match. Fortunately, UWP was awesome and really fun to play since they had only brought 11 people. For these 8 person matches, only Kuncklepuck [#54] and myself had any past tournament experience; the rest of our team were  By the time I got out of the car after that forever stretch of road that is Route 34, I didn’t care what really happened.  I wasn’t going to think about the crap week I just had, I wasn’t going to think about the five hour drive in my really small car, I wasn’t going to worry about the shot clock. I just wanted to run around and be really, really loud. And this is what I did.

By our second half with Western Kentucky, reinforcements show up from Kevin Hill’s car, WKU pulls out the crowns, and we continue to have a really fun game. Trick shots, gladiator dodgeball, and pulling an Iron Curtain keeps everyone happy.  Our rookie players really got into our cheers, and it seemed like we had a lot of catches. I believe DePaul definitely had the most fun out of anybody in Macomb.

For the later half of our match with WIU, some of the younger players started getting a little frustrated with how serious WIU was taking the game. I think this might have been part the team being tired from traveling for 5 hours and then playing three straight hours. Another part was the majority of WIU taking dodgeball against DePaul way to serious for the entirety duration of the match. But then again, the majority of DePaul didn’t let it faze them. No matter what they are going to play dodgeball their way, and I’m really proud of the way the team played that whole day.

Since not enough people wanted to stay the night, we decided to hit up Walmart to take advantage of cheaper taxes for the hanging out at home. Then the team had a quick family dinner at Wendy’s before driving home under a full moon. We even managed to stay under budget if you don’t count Kevin’s blown tire.

500 pictures and 500 miles later, DePaul Dodgeball remains undefeated.

Why Nationals 2011 Will Rock

Story by: Josh Raymer & Felix Perrone

Paid, semi-professional referees. WKU is going to hire eight officials to referee both days of the tournament. To get them prepared, they’ll ref WKU’s practices the month leading up to Nationals. Having paid refs will help avoid scheduling conflicts and keep overwhelmed player refs from being ignored during big games. It also leaves teams to enjoy their free time between games.

A better lunch option on Saturday. As opposed to pizza, each team member will be given a pass to Fresh Food, our school’s buffet-style cafeteria. About a three minute walk from the recreation center, teams can enjoy a hearty lunch during their scheduled break.

Stringent enforcement of the rules. Commissioner Bomis has made it clear that the following rules will not be ignored next April:

10 player rule – come with less than 10 players and you’ll be turned away at the door.

Student IDs– players must present a valid ID before playing. This prevents students from other schools and alumni from playing on teams where they don’t belong.

20 player cap– 5 bench players is all you get. JV teams will get action before Nationals.

A new seeding formula. Bomis has proposed this on the forum and it’s still being tweaked, but there will be a new way for determining Saturday’s pools that will help us avoid what happened with this year’s tournament, which featured some loaded and not-so-loaded pools. This formula will probably take into account season performance AND performance on Saturday to give us the most fair and accurate seedings for Sunday’s games.

All-Star game and skills challenges. We want to start Saturday off with a bang by finding out who has the league’s best hands and its fastest arm with help from the ROB 9000 and a radar gun. Winners will get actual awards and be recognized on the website. The All-Star game will come after the skills challenge. Preliminary teams are Michigan vs. Everyone Else. Nobody knows a team’s best players better than its own members, so each player will nominate either 2 players (for team Everyone Else) or 4 (for Team Michigan) from their own team to determine the makeup of each squad. The two players from each team with the most votes get selected as All-Stars. And yes, players can vote for themselves. Both All-Star squads will even get their own uniforms, which will also serve as the souvenirs for All-Star players. The winning team also gets actual awards and recognition on the website.

Comprehensive media coverage. We made a step in the right direction with live podcasts from this year’s tournament, but we’re going to up the ante for 2011. What does this mean? Well, plan on footage from EVERY game that is played on both days. That’s right, every single one. On top of that, we’ll have two announcers per court who will call the action from each game. That recording won’t go up as a podcast, but rather as voiceover for the game footage, essentially providing the games + commentary that every major sports league enjoys. A separate Nationals YouTube account will be set up so players can re-watch games at their leisure. Finally, each media duo will be tweeting updates throughout the day.

Full color program for every player. During the course of the season, Jazzy will collect team photos, rosters and blurbs for each team. He’ll compile then into a beautifully designed, full color program to be handed out at Nationals.

Cheaper cost per team. Right now, the preliminary cost looks to be about $175 per team. That includes referee, food, shirt and All-Star game costs.

Nice facilities. Granted, BGSU’s Perry Fieldhouse is the ideal place for a dodgeball tournament. While we can’t match that, WKU’s recreation center just underwent a $50 million renovation and is well-equipped to handle the number of teams that show up in Bowling Green next April. We’ll have four courts dedicated to game action and (hopefully) a large, multi-purpose room where players can lounge in between games.

The chance to play a championship game on the main court in WKU’s basketball arena. Not since Nationals at GVSU have teams had this opportunity, and if things go according to plan, the two teams left standing at the end of Sunday will square off on the most revered court in south central Kentucky. Now we just need to work on filling that place to capacity!