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Buckeye Showcase Preview

Sunday marks the first big tournament of the college dodgeball season! The 3rd Annual Buckeye Showcase will feature five Ohio schools itching to be recognized as the state’s top ranked team. Although we are less than a month into the season, we are anticipating close matches and new rivalries; the Ohio teams continue to narrate the college dodgeball scene.

So who do we need to look out for? Whose match predictions will prove true? Which rookies should we keep an eye on as the season progresses? And how will these teams perform against their current standings?

Buckeye Showcase

Top Rookie Classes of 2021-2022

As we look to the start of another new NCDA Season and teams begin recruiting their next captains or future All-Americans we thought it would be fun to take a look back at last year’s top rookie classes.

Several teams across the league brought in multiple impact players which speaks to the depth and resiliency we are seeing across the league in the first full year back post-COVID.

Here are the top 5 Rookie Classes of 2021-22:

2022 Women’s All-American Team

The 2022 NCDA season was always going to be one with a lot of mystery heading into the year. With a significant hiatus away from the court, questions about which teams and players would step up and push their way to the top remained at large until finally everything came together with a fantastic showing at this year’s Nationals. Since 2017, the NCDA has honored the female competitors who have dedicated time and effort to their craft. These women erased all the doubt, the mystery, and questions through their excellent play and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt they were some of the best athletes college dodgeball had to offer. This list recognizes both the athletic achievements and amazing leadership these women have brought to their respective clubs.

– Hunter Ford, NCDA President

Ohio State Buckeyes Pre-Nationals Spotlight

Leading into Nationals, we look to spotlight as many teams as we can in hopes of shining a bright light on standouts from participating teams. These glow-ups include up to 2 of each team’s standout rookies as well as a handful of core contributing players that have gotten their respective team to where they are going into the National Collegiate Dodgeball Association’s annual finale. Lastly, we get a glance into each participating team’s mindset and expectations going into Nationals.

Comparing Resumes of the NCDA’s Top 5

The following article was prepared by Kevin Bailey, Wes Peters, and Kathryn Mays.

With the March 2022 Power Rankings just released, the top 5 teams in the NCDA deserve a deeper dive. It seems at this point in the season, the top 5 teams in the league have separated themselves a bit from the rest of the pack.

With Cincinnati winning the Ohio Dodgeball Cup, Michigan State winning the Michigan Dodgeball Cup, James Madison putting the hammer down on the rest of the East Coast, Grand Valley State boasting a 13-2 overall record, and Ohio State chugging along as a title contender and up to #3 in the Gonzalez standings, these 5 teams all have had stellar campaigns thus far.

Let’s take a closer look at each team’s resume to get a better understanding of where each squad stands heading into the final month of the collegiate dodgeball season! We will cover these teams in the order in which they were ranked in the March 2022 PR:

The War V Recap

We expected a weekend full of quality dodgeball as Akron hosted their 5th annual iteration of The War. What we witnessed, however, was frankly a lot of lopsided matches. Certain teams we anticipated to have great performances came in as advertised. Others left a lot to be desired, and will hope to bounce back strong if they play again before Nationals, or else they will be chewing on those hard truths about the way their team played for the next 5 weeks.

With that being said, there is a lot to unwrap, and a lot to be said about what we saw from each team, whether they performed well, poorly, or somewhere in between. Let’s go team by team and evaluate what we saw.

Baller of the Month December 2021: Derrek Kemper

The long wait is over! Derrek Kemper of THE Ohio State University is your Baller of the Month for December. The Rookie sensation for the Buckeyes is a Power house thrower, and already has the catching ability and court awareness of a multi-year veteran. Derrek has proven himself to be a huge asset to the talented Buckeye roster thus far. We talked all things Dodgeball, including his go-to tournament meals!

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Previewing the 2022 Ohio Dodgeball Cup

For the first time in two years, the Ohio Dodgeball Cup will be played this Saturday, February 5th, on Bowling Green State University’s campus. There will be five teams in attendance on the fifth; Akron, Bowling Green State, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ohio State – all vying for a chance to take home the hardware Saturday afternoon. This could work out to be a great opportunity for those around the league to understand who the true top team in Ohio is this season. Or, we could be left with even more parity than we ended the fall semester with. Regardless, only one team can take the Cup home, and all five want it.

We asked each of the five teams what they think of their matchups this weekend, if they are bringing any young/lesser-known players they feel could be poised to make an impact, and how significant they felt winning the Ohio Dodgeball Cup would be for each of their programs. Here’s what they had to say:

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Ohio Dodgeball Cup

Cincinnati Super Smackdown Tournament Review

This year, the league is witnessing arguably some of the most balanced skill sets within the top 8 teams that it has ever seen. In a neck and neck dogfight for the top spot in the rankings, there has been quite some uncertainty on where to predict the final standings for each team. With 4 of these top 8 teams competing in this tournament, we were hoping to clear some of that uncertainty, but all we got was more of it.

Each Ohio team, coming off of their own respective dominant performances, was surely excited to play a hot MSU, who just celebrated a huge technical upset over GVSU. Mixed into these matchups are both UK and WMU, both competing in their season inducting tournament. As the league eagerly looked for the results of this tournament to shine some clarity on the true hierarchy of the league, the results this day struck an existential blow to the concept of clarity: Akron defeated MSU, MSU defeated OSU, OSU defeated UC, and UC defeated Akron and MSU. What do we take away from this? Are any of these teams the technical winner? The transitive property rests in an infinite loop, so we asked each team to give us their thoughts on each matchup to help us debug these results.

Cincinnati Super Smackdown

Buckeye Opener

2nd Annual John Betters’ Bobcat Bonanza Tournament Review

The second annual John Betters’ Bobcat Bonanza showed us where a lot of teams stand at this point in the season. With most teams having played a match throughout the league as of the conclusion of this weekend, I think we are finally starting to get a good picture for how each team compares to one another. While there are still a lot of lingering questions (IE – how does the majority of the East Coast stand up to the rest of the league? What does Michigan State look like? Is Towson still truly a top team in the NCDA? Are Grand Valley and Cincinnati actually that good?), we did get some real answers this weekend. Yes, Grand Valley is still a force to be reckoned with. Yes, Cincinnati is a legitimate title contender despite the loss to the aforementioned Lakers. Yes, the league is in overall good health with impressively large rookie classes for a lot of teams who hadn’t played prior to this weekend such as Ohio and Saginaw Valley.

What hasn’t been answered, however, is what each team thought about their own individual performances on the weekend. The participating Captains and Presidents minced no words when it comes to how they felt about their teams’ performances this past weekend. Here’s what they had to say:

2nd Annual John Betters’ Bobcat Bonanza Preview

With the return of dodgeball comes the return of what I can only assume will become a time honored tradition for Ohio University, and that is hosting the annual John Betters’ Bobcat Bonanza in the fall semester. Not only will this year’s iteration feature eight talented dodgeball teams, but we will also witness the retirement of the great John Betters’ jersey as well as the ceremonial first throw – a welcomed new addition to the tournament.

Silliness aside, Ohio University will be host to some of the hardest hitting, most impactful matchups the NCDA has to offer since before the pandemic started in March of 2020. The teams in attendance will be Bowling Green State University, the University of Cincinnati, Grand Valley State University, James Madison University, Miami University, hosts Ohio University, [the] Ohio State University, and Saginaw Valley State University.

There are a lot of intriguing storylines to consider and questions that need answers as we head into Saturday’s tournament. To shine some light on some of those, we’ve asked the leaders of each team to provide some insight into who some players to look out for are, what they think about their respective matchups, and what they need to do to have a successful day Saturday. Without further adieu, here is what each team had to say: