Tournament's rules revised in anticipation of larger turnout

There are 126 teams entered in the tournament, the most in school history. The bracket will look similar to past years’, with the groups divided into four brackets based on size. The four groups are small teams, which are capped at 20 people, medium teams of 30, large teams of 50 and mega-teams, eating clubs and residential colleges with no entry limits. The winners of these four brackets will play off for the title of Princeton Dodgeball Tournament champion, with all teams being limited to their 20 best players to even the playing field.

“The tournament will be pretty much the same as last year,” tournament organizer Mark Stefanski ’09 said. “We’ve also made little improvements here and there, so this should be the best tournament yet.”

The most noticeable of these improvements is a newly instituted costume contest. Whereas in the past, teams had to wear the official tournament shirts to play, this year, teams are being encouraged to design their own costumes for the event. The team with the best costume will be awarded a $500 prize and a trophy.

“Last year, the women’s ice hockey team dressed up in pirate outfits, and the wrestling team dressed up in their singlets,” Colosseum Club president Steve Slovenski ’09 said. “We wanted to encourage people to dress up in different costumes; it adds a lot of spirit to the event and creates more team unity.”

The costume contest will also make it easier for the tournament referees to make sure that overzealous players do not sneak into games for which they are not signed up. Additionally, asking teams to design their own costumes will solve the problem of trying to find a different shirt design for each team in the tournament.

In the past, players were only allowed into a game if they were wearing the correct team shirt. This created a personnel problem as the tournament wore on, as players would leave while their team was still eligible, creating a shortage of shirts for participants that had not been at Dillon Gym for the tournament’s opening rounds.

“Last year [former USG president] Rob Biederman [’08] wanted to play for the USG team, but he didn’t have a T-shirt, so the other team complained, and we couldn’t let him play for the USG team even though everyone in the school knew he was a member of the USG,” Slovenski said.

With the new costume rules in effect, it is unlikely that there will be a repeat of this unfortunate episode. Students who are worried about not receiving the 2008 edition of the incredibly popular Dodgeball Tournament shirt should rest assured that there will be plenty of shirts in stock for tournament participants.

“This year we’re giving out just one shirt per person, in the past we gave out different T-shirts to each team, so you could theoretically get as many T-shirts as you wanted,” tournament organizer Eric Markfield ’09 said. “The shirts this year are all the same color, and they are also higher quality.”

For the few students remaining on campus who are still not fully convinced that participating in the Dodgeball Tournament is the best possible way to spend this Thursday night, everyone should know that this year is the first time that a trophy is being awarded to the winning team. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill Little League Champion trophy. The organizers have constructed a seven-foot goliath that puts the Stanley Cup to shame.

“The trophy was assembled from seven old club sports trophies pulled from the basement of Dillon Gym,” Stefanski said. “They were all put together in the mechanical engineering machine shop in three hours. It’s a pretty impressive trophy.”

And indeed, with such a strong field of competitors, it will take a pretty impressive team to bring home this trophy, the $1,000 prize and — most importantly — the eternal glory that comes with being named the Princeton Dodgeball Tournament champion.