As time grows closer to the Michigan Dodgeball Cup and Nationals, let’s take a step back and look at all the Michigan Region schools and their seasons so far. The following teams are: Michigan State Univeristy, Grand Valley State Univeristy, Saginaw Valley State Univeristy, Western Michigan University, and Central Michigan University. We asked respondents from each school these questions about how they felt their season has gone and general knowledge about their clubs.
1. Who is your OT6? (please include if they are a captain, rookie, etc.
2. Anything notable go well for you at these tournaments? Anything you need to improve on?
3. Any changes for your team heading into the spring semester?
4. Which tournament are you most excited for this spring?
5. What team would you most like to play?
6. Do you have any rising players on your team you’d like to give a shoutout?
7. How will your team do this spring?
8. Please list 3 players you think should be on AA and womens AA (not including your team)
9. Please list 1 rookie youve been impressed by (not including your team)
10. Please give us your thoughts on 1 team ranked above you and 1 team ranked below you.
Michigan State University (8-0)- Becca Nguyen.
OT6- Josh Kramer (C), Barry Butler III (A), Jack Girling (A), Alec Deen, DQ McClean (A), Nick Fedewa (rookie).
2. Our record speaks for itself.
3.Continue improving on communication and catching. The Spartans are an arm heavy team and tend to find themselves relying on that. If a team is successful in dwindling their numbers, they need to look for more catches to bring their teammates back into play.
4. MDC. This may be our first time ever going in to MDC undefeated and we feel as if we have that much more to prove to be our first ever back-to-back MDC championship in school history.
5. We’d love to play JMU because from everything we’ve seen on film they are a solid team and they’re the last top 5 team we have yet to play. Our other option would have to be Penn State or Nebraska because we’d love to square up and see who the best Big Ten school is within the NCDA. We’ve seen Penn State have some great moments and we’d really like to test Nebraska to see if they really are underrated.
6. Nick Fedewa: If you watched any of our Gauntlet matchups you should know who this guy is. An amazing arm, insane catch radius and reads the game really well; definitely a front-runner for ROY. Right behind him would be Matt Barriball. He’s beginning to understand the game incredibly well and when you couple that with accurate, hard counters and his quick pace he shows why he stands out and is in the top of a stacked NCDA rookie class. Zach Van Fleet is our third in our trio of rising rookies. He’s so quick and efficient in the transition game. His goal is to learn every position on the court and he’s proven that he can do just that, becoming a true all-around utility player.
7. N/A
8. Joe Barber, Colby Chohrach and Brett Liming – all around great players and key pieces for each of their starting rosters. Elly Shipfer, Vanessa Hudson and Alexis Schultz (MSU’s current pick for women’s MVP). They’re such integral parts of their team and very good players, regardless of division. You definitely have to tread lightly playing those three.
9. One rookie you’ve been impressed with: We actually want to take this opportunity to shout out Central Michigan’s entire team. They’re rebuilding what once was a powerhouse program, a task that’s no easy feat. We believe all of them deserve the recognition for starting CMU’s foundation again – fire up chips!
10. One team above us: none
One team below us: Regardless of the scores last weekend, UWP is a scrappy team and they’ll play tough no matter what. You can always count on the Pioneers to play hard till the end and maintain on-court focus.
Grand Valley State University (10-5)- Ben Smart.
Ot6- Ben Smart (Captain), Matt Budai (Assistant Captain), Owen Israels (Assistant Captain), Tyler Peach, Alec Gonzalez, Mason Smith but it also depends on who is playing the best at the time.
2. We do well when we play our strategy and when we don’t we don’t play that great. Yes, there are many things we need to improve on and we will fix those mistakes at practice.
3. Just get better at our strategy as a whole and get our rookies up to speed as our returners.
4. We have 2 tournaments that we are excited for and they are the Michigan Dodgeball Cup and Nationals.
5. Honestly, we are happy playing anyone. We enjoy the top seeds more though.
6. We have 3 rookies that are on the rise: Mason Smith, Jaymen Gutierrez, Eli Walcott
7. We should be just fine like we always are. We always find a way to get the outcome we like.
8. Evan Eschenburg, Jack Girling, Elly Schipfer, Alexis Schultz.
9. Nick Fedewa – Michigan State
10. I’ll honest with you, we just need to play more games to get our younger players up to speed. I’ll give you my thoughts about everyone above us. They belong there because we haven’t played GV dodgeball at its finest. We will get there trust me.
Saginaw Valley State University (5-7)- Joe Barber.
OT6- Cole Machiela (C), Joe Barber (C), Bryce Stevens (C), Preston Cartwright (C), Kyle Krupp (rookie), Owen Folsom or DJ Goodwin (rookies).
2. Played good in most tournaments. Just a tough schedule.
3. No big changes, just looking to improve consistency.
4. The WAR
5. Pretty much anyone… UWP always seems to be an OT game so maybe them.
6. All of our rookies.
7. SVSU is a second semester team so expect some upsets in favor of us.
8. Owen Israels (GVSU), Ethan Lehmkuhl (OSU), Jack Girling (MSU)
Skye Marvin (UK).
9. Nick Kemer (OSU).
10. Impressed with OU and impressed with WMU.
Western Michigan University (4-11)- Matthew Barnett.
OT6- My OT6 would be Matt Barnett (myself, captain), Joshua “Legolas” VanSlambrouck (captain), Ryan Allor (captain), Randy Santana-Jimenez (captain), Alex Marczuk (rookie), Chase Rosen (rookie).
2. We kept improving each tournament and at our home tournament we went 3-1, best in program history. We, well captains and I, need to polish up our playstyle and our communication.
3. No changes for our team this semester, business as always.
4. I am most excited for the Michigan Dodgeball Cup. It will be many of our players first cup tournament and we will hopefully be able to pull off some upsets.
5. I would most like to play Penn State as my best friend goes there and I would love to say we beat them.
6. I would like to shoutout two rising players, Chase Rosen and Joseph “JR” Williams. Chase has a cannon and is learning how to catch, while JR can catch anything no matter what.
7. Quote me on this, Western has that dawg in us. Prepare for some upsets (looking at you Ohio State).
8. Three players that deserve recognition in this league are Kevin Premsook, Terence Checkett, and obviously Vanessa Hudson.
9. I have been super impressed with Connor Knott from Concordia, wishing him the best luck running CUW and he has goat potential.
10. One team above us that I love is Akron, I think they’re super slept on and will show up when it’s game time. They have good leadership and a lot of super talented players. They should definitely be ranked higher. Central is a team below us that I hope gets better so the Western v Central rivalry isn’t always a 7-0 blowout. I am very excited to play them again to see if they’ve improved.