The SJSL dodgeball league kicked off last night, and the Honey Badgers (our team) played 2 games to start the season. Let me start off by saying what a great bunch of teammates we’ve got. We somehow seem to really luck out with getting good people randomly assigned to our team. The 3 “new” girls were fantastic and perfect teammates, really look forward to playing more alongside them.
The first game was against the Terror Squad. They had some hard throwers on both their girl and guy sides. As a team we started pretty slow, but once we settled down and got the hang of the speed and the ball we won a few of the matches.
I personally got off to a pretty lousy start. I don’t think I threw a ball until the 3rd or 4th match. I spent too much time surveying the field and got hit with some pretty easy one’s early on. Once I settled in though, I let out some decent throws.
The Terror Squad won the game, but I could feel our team’s confidence grow as we played more matches. I was really proud of our girls. Lauren and the sisters Caitlin and Meghan were really aggressive running up to the line to get the ball make many throws. Katie and Stephanie played really great too, lot’s of courage on display.
Dodgeball is very tiring. The frantic pace of the games and playing 16 matches per game can really were you out. Our team somehow drew to play 2 games this night. Despite the fatigue, we were ready for our second game (against a fresh team that hadn’t played yet)!
The Lightning Donkeys greeted us for our second game of the night. A very unique aspect of their team is that they have no girls, just guys. So they played a handicapped game of 4 of their guys against our 5 girls. I’m not so sure that this format will be fair as the season goes on, but we’ll see.
Easily the highlight of the night was the first game pitting our 5 girls against 4 of their guys. I can genuinely say that I can’t easily recall a prouder moment than watching our girls play that first game. They were fearless! They sprinted up to the line and played tough the entire game. In an instant classic moment for the ages, we were down to just Caitlin and a few of their guys. Caitlin took them all out! It was amazing, she is truly my hero.
Our guys new settled down and wiser from our earlier game were able to handle their guys for all but one of our matches. I saw some much improved play by Jared and Kevin the iron man didn’t rest a single match last night (I how you still have an arm today).
I felt a lot more comfortable throwing and was pleased to of been able to take out a number of their guys, with a few clinching our victory. I still have to work on staying more alert and not being so reckless on the court, but the season is still earlier. Hopefully their is a Coach Emanski instructional VHS tape on the fundamentals of dodgeball I can watch.
In an ugly moment for the night Katie did get struck perfectly in the face by a very hard throw by one of the Lightning Donkeys. It was a pretty bad scene, she wasn’t at all pleased, but it was clearly an accident. He wasn’t trying to hit anyone in the head, but at the same time their guys didn’t have to throw quite so hard at our girls when they were playing against them.
All in all it was a great night. Big Mike launching some bone crushing throws, Dustin and Geoff with very solid play, great stuff. While a bit hectic at times, dodgeball is really shaping up to be one of the better ideas in a long time.
Honey Badgers don’t care!