By Nikolas Beers
Warrior
Utica HS
Division 3, Yearbook
Feature Writing: Student Life
As a kid, you stood in a line while two captains picked teams. If you were good, you got picked first. If you couldn’t throw hard enough, you were the last one standing. Winter dodgeball, the glorious game of grabbing a red, bouncy ball and throwing it as hard as you could at the other team, is a tradition.
Most students could remember playing their first game of dodgeball at a young age during a fun session of gym class. In high school, though, the idea of a dodgeball tournament was born. This breed of game involved teams planning their attacks, and they had to be ready for the other team to fire “ammunition” at any moment. During the annualdodgeball tournament, students strategize in an attempt to go as far as they could.
“Our strategy was to wait until most of the time ran out,” junior Sophia Simopoulos said, “then move up so we could be closer to them.”
For the school dodgeball tournament, students formed teams with their friends. The overall champions of the tournament were the sophomores.
“I was on the championship team, and before we started I didn’t think that we would win,” sophomore Gabe Garbarino said. “I thought that the seniors would blow us away, I was very surprised when we won. I had a lot of fun and will come back as a champion next year.” The sophomores were the clear underdogs, and managed to beat the juniors, the seniors, and even the teachers.
“Before the tournament I did think that we would win,” sophomore Gjergj Camaj said. “We won our tournament in junior high with the same team so I was pretty confident. After we won we got awesome dodgeball t-shirts, plaques and also our money back from when we had to pay to enter. I will totally do this again next year I had a lot of fun.”
Many of the seniors were mad about this because they were “supposed” to be the winners. It was their last chance at dodgeball glory.
“I thought we would win the tournament, and we were doing really good,“ senior Jaylin Hill said. “We just fell apart at the end.”
Dodgeball is much different now in high school then it was in elementary school, but everyone still has fun going out there and playing the game.