Tag: SJSL

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Dodgeball Week 7

dead honey badgerWow, this was not a good night for the Honey Badgers. Our only bright spot was our girls playing against the Ghostbuster girls. It was really exciting to watch them both play, and the Honey Badger squad did have some great moments against them.

Our guys on the other hand, well we really just stunk it up last night. I personally had a very bad night playing. My shoulder was sore all day, and in warm ups I knew that I wouldn’t be getting much if anything on my throws that night. It’s a lousy feeling, and I felt bad that I wasn’t able to contribute as much as I’d liked to of.

Our second match of the night was against the winless Lightning Donkeys. Unfortunately they are no longer winless, which really stung. The match was very close, but they did edge us and it pretty much summed up our underachieving night.

Our two replacement guys Matt and Jordan did fill in admirably for Jared our with a neck injury and Mike who had other engagements to attend to.

The only really positive thing I got out of last night was that in both games I have the opponents tell me that I displayed sportsmanship. I guess that’s a nice compliment to receive, but I’d of preferred that they were upset that I had thrown too hard at them instead.

We’ll get the week off then hope to rebound and go into the playoffs with some momentum if at all possible.

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Dodgeball Week 3

GhostbustersThe Ghostbusters were our week 3 opponenets. They are a very solid team and seem to get much more movement on the ball than any team we’ve played thus far.

With a gutsy opening game performance, our guys did mange to take the first match. It was great to not start ourselves in such a deep hole, as we’ve seemed to do thus far. I felt as though we played a lot more comfortably in week 3. I didn’t sense as much confusion as in previous weeks.

Our girls were down Caitlin who was unfortunately ill, and played 4 against 5 the entire night. Despite playing a girl down, they did pretty well. It was nice to see how much they had improved in catching the ball.

They all had some great catches and also showed excellent judgement in when to not catch and just get out of the way. Meghan seemed to be the last standing most of the games and almost single handedly won a few matches for us. If we can protect her and her sister, I think we can win a lot of matches.

I personally didn’t play very well overall. My throws just didn’t have any pop on them this week. I kinda realized this in warm-ups, but hopefully this was just a one night thing and not signs of a dead arm already.

The Ghostbusters was the game, but we did win 4 of the matches. With our guys winning 3 of them against their very good guys team. I really think we can build on this and continue to improve.

Afterwards I asked the Ghostbusters is they wanted to play a few more games just for fun. We agreed and decided to play everyone co-ed at once. It was pretty crazy having so many people on the court at once, but a lot of fun. I had no idea when throws were coming from and didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked, but it was fun just to see everyone else play. Ryan the referee hopped in there too on our team, which was nice to see.

Even though we lost, I thought we made some big strides overall as a team this week. I hope that we manage to peak right as playoffs begin (still a ways off).

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Sports

Dodgeball Week 1

Honey BadgerThe 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!