Imagine this: you and your family plan a set of trips throughout the year, with one blowout trip at to cap it all off. You can afford a few small ones along the way, usually just for one day, leading up to the final one; there’s one problem. You realize after those day trips that you don’t have the budget for the final trip! You and your family must now face the disappointment of not being able to take that big vacation.
Virginia Commonwealth’s dodgeball team has suffered with this problem since they joined the NCDA in 2012. The Rams were able to attend a few regional tournaments each year, but were never able to raise to funds to attend Nationals. The club has always wanted to attend, a few factors, primarily the money, always got in the way. With the help of a few donations and a deal with the NCDA, VCU’s fortunes would finally change.
The league agreed to waive the $300 entry fee in exchange that the members of the Rams team complete 100 hours of community service by June 30th. VCU President Adam Hallers jumped on the opportunity to talk about all the work his team did.
“For our community service we had several members of the team go out and conduct individual community service such as cleaning up the James River,” said Hallers. “But the bulk of our volunteering came from partnering up with both new student orientations and rec sports of VCU to help create and run a dodgeball night for the nights of the new student orientations.”
While the members of VCU enjoyed what they did for their local community, they got just as much enjoyment out of what they were doing the service for to begin with.
“Nationals was great exposure for our team and it allowed us to gain great experience by playing teams we would never get a chance to play. Plus we had a blast at Nationals,” said Hallers.
Hopefully this paves the way for the Rams to become regular attendees at the NCDA’s championship weekend. Regardless of dodgeball implications though, any opportunity the league and its member teams have to give back is always a great thing to take advantage of.
