The Spartans played a big schedule in captain Zach Parten’s final season, playing traditional rivals such as Grand Valley, Saginaw Valley, and up-comer Central Michigan, but the season also featured a trip to Kentucky and to Bowling Green. The Spartans played 14 regular season games, which was tied for most in the country with SVSU. They started the season off with two disappointing road losses (6-3 to SVSU and 12-0 to GVSU) but their next tournament was the Kentucky Classic, in which the Spartans would go 3-0 defeating Kentucky, Western Kentucky, and Louisville. Following that, the Spartans would travel to Delta College, a traditional powerhouse team who would be playing their last season in the league, and they lost 6-0. Next for the Spartans was the 2009 Michigan Dodgeball Cup, a 5 team round robin tournament featuring MSU, GVSU, SVSU, CMU, and Delta. Michigan State showed major improvement in the MDC, despite the fact that they only had one win. The Spartans knocked off Delta College 3-1, only lost 7-0 against a GVSU team who is the considered to be greatest team in NCDA history, hung around against SVSU (a 4-2 loss), and suffered what would be the first of many devastating defeats against rival CMU. Twenty days later Michigan State would travel to Bowling Green for a round robin against Ohio schools, including a 4-0 loss to Big Ten rival Ohio State, a 1-1 draw against Kent State, and a tough 3-2 win against BGSU. This led the Spartans into Nationals 2009 at GVSU. Both the Varsity and Junior Varsity teams would compete at Nationals, and both teams would do well.
The Spartans added a few key pieces for the 2008-2009 season, including the hardest thrower for the team in Andrew Koczara, future captain Sam Hiller, speedster Ray Matiyow, and three year grip throwers Kyle Schubel and Erik Butterfield. It would also be the last season for Jason Arens, one of the hardest throwers in team history.
The captains for 2008-2009 were senior Zach Parten, junior Joe Marotta, and sophomore Cameron Massimino, but sophomore Ian Childs was also a captain after an injury to Zach Parten.
The Spartans had two different uniforms this season- a white one and a black one. This helped for when they were playing schools such as GVSU in all black and WKU in all white.
Dominique Carruthers had this to say about the team, “I would never want to be on any other team than the MSU team. Our team has the most diverse styles in the league I personally feel. To me it never matters if we win or lose, but more so how we fought the battle.” The Spartans fought some battles in the 2008-2009 season, and won many of them.
