Princeton's best talk about the secrets behind their elite skills

To have a successful team, players must possess solid skills individually and should be able to work well as a group. There is great debate over which team strategies are most effective and which set of skills is most important for each member of a team to have. To help shed light on these issues, The Daily Princetonian has contacted some experts in the field who will be participating in the tournament.

“In our practices, we’ve been implementing the flying-V formation quite well,” junior men’s water polo captain Alex Edmunds said. “We’ll probably go with that as our dominant strategy, but we might switch it up when we see different opponents. For example, when we play against the football team, we’ll probably switch to the Snake-in-the-Grass strategy and try to pick them off like guerilla warriors.”

But the water polo team isn’t about to reestablish its legendary dominance of the tournament, especially not with junior quarterback and tri-captain Brian Anderson and the reigning champion football team in the way.

“To the unwitting outsider, the football team’s unrivaled success could appear to be because of the massive biceps of our sophomore linebackers or the athleticism of the juniors,” Anderson said. “Even though these things may be true, our real strength will come from our team unity.”

Both of these strategies stand in stark contrast to that of the up-and-coming wrestling team. With many freshmen and sophomores in its ranks, the wrestling team will be looking to establish its own legacy.

“Our strategy is to remain sleek and aerodynamic in our wrestling singlets,” senior Sam Ritter said.

This strategy might seem simplistic, but it could prove effective against teams like water polo and football, who could end up trying to do too much. One of the most important elements of dodgeball is understanding the fine line that separates under-preparation and over-preparation.

For individual players, it remains unclear which skill, muscle group or attribute is most essential for success on the court. Thus, it’s difficult for teams to decide what to tell their members to work on in the gym.

Despite this confusion, however, the wrestling team has narrowed its skill training down to one of the smaller muscles in the body.

“We will be most focused on the masseter muscles in the jaw because the game is trash talking half of the time,” Ritter said of his workouts.

Edmunds has his team more focused on traditional exercises to attain peak shape.

“We do a lot of humpers,” Edmunds said. “Those definitely give us the torque we need from the waist to huck these balls at the lightning-fast speeds we do. In fact, I’m doing a set of 50 right now. Bicep curls are also key to our success, both on the court with the balls and off the court with the ladies. So we’ll see how these next couple days of tapering work out, and hopefully our humpers and bis will be in primo condition come [tonight].”

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

The football players will look to their mental toughness in hopes that they will be able to wear down opponents mentally.

“Our regimented training schedule helps us perform at a peak level during all hours,” Anderson said.

Ritter, Edmunds and Anderson all declined to predict the outcome of the tournament and rightfully so. At the end of the day, dodgeball is a game whose outcome is hard to control, even for a great team. A missed step here, a dropped ball there, and a team’s best player finds himself on the bench.

Right now, however, it appears that the football team is the favorite. Coming off a victory a year ago, Anderson is ready to lead the troops to victory.

“No one can prepare themselves for the emotional emptiness that is caused by losing a dodgeball game,” Anderson said. “This is why we try to avoid losses at all costs.”

With a motivated leader, it will be hard to lose. But don’t forget about the wrestling and water polo teams, which may well challenge the football team’s dominance.