On Saturday December 7th, Northern Illinois University (NIU) hosted a meet-up tournament between UWP and UIUC. After an official NCDA match, NIU’s Women’s Rugby club and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu club participated in a 6v6 Round Robin play. To end the tournament, the Women’s Rugby club and a member of the Jiu Jitsu club played a Women’s no-sting game against UWP featuring UIUC’s Naila Kudla. Here’s how the tournament went.
UWP vs UIUC
UWP was determined to redeem themselves from the loss at the Pioneer Classic V against UIUC. While they didn’t win this time either, the number of points played were fewer, and the game went into overtime. UWP brought a roster of seventeen while UIUC came with only eleven players. We were able to get our rookies in on some points which provided them with some practice against UIUC’s play style. Even though we didn’t win this game, we got to show off how our on-court communication and awareness has improved since our last match.
Round Robin
Two courts were set up in our six versus six style of play, and those participating gathered in their predetermined teams. The seven teams made included UWP A, UWP B, UIUC A, UIUC B, Rugby A, Rugby B, and BJJ. While this part of the tournament was just for fun, it gave our rookies the chance to learn how to play call, to keep track of how many balls their team had, and how to communicate better with their teammates. I can only speak for my team (UWP B), but we played UWP A as intense as we could (everyone but the women were not allowed to pinch throw), but we ended up abandoning that play style for a more lax and fun style.
Something that surprised me as we progressed in the round robin play was just how much the non-dodgeball clubs were learning from watching and playing the dodgeball clubs. Blocking became more confident, players learned how to pinch, and they started to play call when attacking. All in all, it was very fun.
Women’s No-Sting
This match was UWP’s second official women’s match ever. We came in much more prepared compared to our first match (see Pioneer Classic V recap), and our women had much more confidence in their skills and roles. It was cool to see the rugby and Jiu Jitsu women take what they learned in the round robin and incorporate it into the no-sting game.
There are still things that are frustrating due to a lack of experience and inability to play other women’s teams, but I can’t wait to see how our women’s team grows over the upcoming semester. I hope we can play more women at our next home tournament in March.
Final Thoughts
We are extremely grateful to NIU for hosting this tournament; it was nice to have a short drive for a change. It was nice to see the support from our families and friends who made the drive down to see us, and it was great to see how much fun everyone had (even if an ice coffee was lost). We hope we can set up something like this again to gain more attraction from other schools and hopefully expand the central region of the NCDA.
