There are a good number of tournaments that our league presents every year, like clockwork. There’s Nationals, of course. That and the Michigan Dodgeball Cup are the two longest running annual tournaments our league boasts. After that comes the Ohio Dodgeball Cup and James Madison’s annual BEAST tournament (by the way, the weekend of March 5th marks the TENTH edition of the BEAST… Unbelievable, but more on that later). This weekend, another yearly event returns to the National Collegiate Dodgeball Association in our post-COVID era. That tournament is of course Akron’s The War V.
This year makes the 5th consecutive (again, COVID not withstanding) year this tournament will be held in Akron, Ohio. This weekend there will be 11 teams in attendance playing 20 matches, 3rd most all time for both, and most since 2019 where at The War III there were a remarkable 15 teams playing 26 matches. By the way, fun fact, The War III’s 26 matches are exactly how many matches have been played total thus far this semester. Finally, each of the 11 teams competing this weekend have played in at least one War prior to 2022.
This weekend is going to be a thrilling one that I would be absolutely sure not to miss. This 11 team tournament will be by far the biggest we’ve had all year long. In attendance will be host school Akron, Bowling Green State, Cincinnati, Cleveland State, Grand Valley State, Miami, Ohio, Ohio State, Saginaw Valley State, Towson, and Wisconsin-Platteville. These teams will compete in an insane amount of thrilling, Nationals Elite 8 quality matchups.
I hope you aren’t tired of random historical War facts, because we’re going to break down each team’s individual performances in past War’s statistically, and give a bit of a preview for what their performance could look like this weekend. Let’s start with the host school, Akron.