One of the largest campus-wide sporting events, the annual Princeton Dodgeball tournament pitted University clubs and organizations against each other last Thursday night. After over 80 games over ten hours, the Tiger Tones were the surprise underdog in the championship bracket and varsity football defended its championship by fending off varsity men's basketball. The Daily Princetonian reached out to the tournament’s student directors James Poindexter '18 and Louis Tambellini '18 to discuss preparation, tournament surprises and ordering 30 boxes of pizza every 40 minutes.
Daily Princetonian: What is the main incentive in organizing a dodgeball tournament?
James Poindexter: The intention was to bring all these different student groups and organizations together for just one night of having fun and, in this case, dodgeball. A lot of the student groups don’t really get to interact with each other a lot unless you’re in the same sector. The intention was to just have an extra alternative to going to the Street and bring the community closer together — all over dodgeball.
DP: What preparations did you two make prior to and during the tournament?
JP: November and early December is usually when we start working on it — in that time, the biggest issue is how to secure funding, as well as creating a plan to let people know what’s happening. Then, around February, that’s when we’re trying to secure pizza orders, when we’re trying to secure what funding we do have, and push hard for people to register their teams. And then when we get to March and April, that’s when it starts to get really hectic: we’re holding Captain’s meetings, we’re training the referees, holding workshops to prepare the refs for that night and making brackets and shifts, bringing all these different departments such as PSafe, Building Services. On the day of, it’s just a matter of making sure all the dodgeballs are pumped, the jerseys, the bleachers and the benches are all set up.
DP: Were there any major upsets?
Louis Tambellini: I can’t think of many off the top of my head, but what I thought was great was the Tiger Tones making it all the way to the championship bracket.
DP: Can you describe the most high profile games?
JP: The real meat of the tournament I would say is right in the middle, from around 8-11 p.m., and what you have is you have the start of the huge bracket games — where the eating clubs and residential colleges come. While the games are going on you just have a whole bunch of people cheering on their friends, laughing, having a good time, just enjoying themselves.
DP: Did any conflicts between or within teams arise during the event?
JP: There are some teams that go just for fun and some that go with the objective of winning — which is perfectly fine, it’s why we have the tournament in the first place — so it’s about being as competitive as you can, but also about having fun while you can. We knew it was going to happen, and we were ready for it; it mostly comes down to making sure it’s on a respectful level.
DP: Can you name any specific instances?
JP: I would say the only specific incident would be between varsity [men's] basketball and sprint football — it was very competitive and that’s perfectly fine, but when you get games that large, it becomes kind of hard for us to manage. It was very high-profile in that there were a lot of spectators surrounding the court, which was nice. It did get a little heated, but nothing bad happened whatsoever, and they were both very respectable about it after the game was over.
DP: What has been the general reception and feedback that you have received?
JP: Well, we’ll be sending out a post-tournament survey which is open for anybody to fill out. Again, we start planning these things in November, so we have plenty of time to use that feedback to make things better.
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