You've all been waiting for this, am I right? Am I right??
*pretends you are all gleefully nodding your heads*
So ... once again, dodgeball tournament. This one was held last Thursday and was put on by the Bronco Athletic Association, which means the tournament included several teams filled with athletes, many of whom I have covered during my time on the school paper. Would I get creamed by my sources? Or would the team of journalists rise to the occasion and actually beat the jocks at something?
I'll answer those questions later. First, more build-up! *dodges tomatoes thrown at stage*
We at The Poly Post had been looking forward to this tournament for a while and took great care in assembling our teams. Because the tournament set its cutoff mark at teams of 5-7 people, we were forced to split the Poly Post Punishers into two groups - the Delta Squad and the Omega Squad. Our news editor, Dan (far right, in the blue bandana), was captain of the Delta Squad, while Lifestyle editor Casey (in the Metallica shirt) helmed the Omega Squad. Not that this would mean anything to many of you at the moment, but here's how the team lineups played out:
Delta Squad
Dan (news editor)
Me (sports editor)
Hannah (assistant managing editor)
Celeste (assistant editor)
Chris (photographer0
Matt (photographer)
Jon (staff writer)
Omega Squad
Casey (Lifestyle editor)
Ashley (editor-in-chief)
Lucio (photo editor)
Allen (assistant photo editor)
Eric (staff writer)
Kaymar "The Great" (friend of The Post)
It's impossible to tell from text alone, but on paper, the Omega squad was definitely better than the Delta Squad, even if we did have a cooler name and a cooler hand signal (triangle for life, yo). Casey's a good player, Lucio and Allen are relatively athletic, Eric is an actual athlete (he is on the tennis team), and Kaymar was the only person on either team with a legit nickname. You tell me who is supposed to be better.
Of course, we could not outright admit our inferiority. Up until the day of the tournament, there was much trash talking around the newsroom, and a civil war was just ready to erupt when we inevitably faced each other on the dodgeball court.
... Except that never happened, actually. We didn't know this until we arrived, but 22 teams entered the tournament, and those teams were separated into two 11-team leagues. The Deltas and the Omegas were split up and never got the chance to play each other. :(
But I'm getting ahead of myself! Our main preparation before the tournament was, of course, costumes. For the most part we wore similar costumes to our last tournament: high socks, shorts, and so on. However, there were two big additions to this:
1) Official Poly Post t-shirts. Yep, we have our own shirts now. They're a sort of off-white and have a pretty kickass Poly Post design on front with a golden bronco, and on back they say, "Read on." with our Web site URL (which you can go to right here) just below that. Pretty awesome, those shirts.
2) Our own random flair. Pretty much everyone had something to make him or her look like a badass, dodgeballin' motherfucker. For example, Casey had a hairband that made him look like the Lakers' Sasha Vujacic, while Eric had a bandana. I wore a green headband and a white Kobe Bryant-style NBA shooting sleeve. Casey had a black one, himself, and they're awesome. I could feel its power coursing through my arm whenever I threw a ball. Magical.
Anyway, back to the day of the tournament - once again, we walked in style from our office to the student center and then to the dodgeball field, but it was a bit less energetic than before because it was so damn hot. Anyone who lives in California is well aware of the horrible heat wave we've been going through lately. The bastard sun was in full force that day, but both teams gutted it out because The Poly Post is a hard, hard paper.
Unfortunately, only one of the teams was a hard, hard team. Although the Omega Squad didn't make it to the second round of the tournament, it finished with a respectable 5-4 record, including a victory against the men's soccer team, which beat every other team it faced and ended up the tournament champion.
The poor Deltas, on the other hand, finished the tournament 2-7. Our only wins came against the women's basketball team and some random sorority I can't remember right now. Kappa Kappa Wong, I guess. I don't know. All that matters is we beat them. There were at least two other games we should have won, but for God knows what reason, we lost to teams that were worse than us. So lame.
Of course, the worst part of it all is that Dan ditched us in the middle of the match. He had a softball match to play in with about three games remaining, so he had to leave us. What a traitor!! We never recovered after that happened. It was a deadly blow to our morale.
Hm. I'm tired of using words to describe this. Let's go to the pictures!!
Me posing with Hannah. I'm working that headband.
Everyone's rushing for the ball.
Celebrating after a rare victory.
Always protect your balls. Remember that.
You see this, and you'd better get out of the way.
This was the shirt I was going to wear if our Poly Post shirts didn't arrive on time. Represent, yo.
Hm, those pictures are nice, but it feels like something is missing, doesn't it?
I know! How about ... video.
Yep, yep, yep. Why just read about the events when you can actually watch them? I shot close to 40 minutes of video from our day at the tournament, from our walk on the way over to, well, you'll see at the end. If any of you decide to watch the whole thing, just beware of some repeat footage I forgot to cut out near the end of the first video.
I'm not onscreen that much, but my voice is all over the place. Is this a good thing? You be the judge. Now go ahead and be bewildered at all the inside jokes you're hit with.
Some random things I feel like explaining:
BranTan = Brandon, the greatest photographer in the universe. He's going to be a superstar. You'll all see!!
Once again, taking a ball from a girl is one of the highlights of my day. I'm really trying for those boos.
I swear to God I'm not as big a pervert as these videos make me seem.
So, um, the rant at the end lol. Basically, in our last game, I was called out after a ball whizzed by my elbow and barely grazed it. Who the hell calls someone out on a ticky-tack hit like that? Power-hungry referees, that's who.
One last thing - a few more pictures I couldn't show before ...
The sun is shining upon my video.
My award-winning interview with Dan. He'll never work in this town again!!
