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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?

Miami/UC Double Header

A League of Our Own – Kacey Durliat

Dodgettes Navigating a New League

The 2022 semester has come to an end, and one thing can be said for certain about the college dodgeball atmosphere: we are amidst an entirely new league. College dodgeball returned last fall, and with it came an exciting season of close matches, upsets, rookies, and of course, dodgettes (Shout-out to Akron University’s female players for coining the new term).

This article continues to highlight dodgettes across the league: 2021-2022 season graduates, pre-COVID veterans, and new recruits. Stay tuned to hear how they made their name in the league and what they are looking forward to this year; in other words, dodgettes navigating a new league.

Cincinnati Bearcats 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.

Clifton Heights Classic

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Previewing the 2022 Clifton Heights Classic

The last tournament before Nationals west of Maryland (who are hosting the next day) will be on March 26th in Cincinnati, Ohio. Yes, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats will be playing host to a trio of teams as we get one last look at a handful of teams this weekend prior to everyone meeting in Kalamazoo, Michigan for our league’s first National Championship Tournament in three long years.

The Bearcats will welcome the Pioneers of Wisconsin-Platteville, the Wildcats of Kentucky, and the Bobcats of Ohio to town for the Clifton Heights Classic, a tournament they plan to make annual as a perhaps last stop event before April’s winner-take-all affair. There are a handful of good storylines to pay attention to this weekend for each team, so let’s take a look.

February BOTM: Cory Heitmann

2022 Ohio Dodgeball Cup Winner and Assistant Captain for the UC Bearcats

The Baller of the Month for February is Cory Heitmann, Assistant Captain of the Cincinnati Bearcats! Helping lead the Bearcats to an undefeated 6-0 record and the Ohio Dodgeball Cup in the month of February, Cory answers some hard hitting questions, and gives a look ahead for UC at Nationals.

To watch his interview, click on the link below:

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.

Ohio Dodgeball Cup

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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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

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:

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