Web Update: Football wins 2011 Dodgeball Tournament

The annual campus-wide dodgeball tournament always seems to be filled with shocking upsets in the middle rounds, and Thursday’s event was no exception. But the team left standing in the end was one many could have predicted: the football team. Football dominated Cap & Gown Club in the championship match, storming to an early advantage and closing out the 20-man match with seven players still on the court to claim the title.

Football won the large bracket last year but fell to Tiger Inn in a riveting semifinal match. 2010 champion Hawaii Club did not enter a team in this year’s event.

The marquee quarter of the bracket saw more excitement than usual. Cottage Club, a perennial contender, was upset by Ivy Club in the first round, opening up the bottom half of the huge bracket for Forbes College to make a run. Three hours later, Wilson College stunned defending huge bracket champion T.I. in the quarterfinal round, overcoming a two-on-four disadvantage in one of the most unlikely comebacks in recent memory.

Wilson, which lost its opening game last year but avenged that loss to Whitman College in the first round, would defeat Mathey College in the huge bracket semifinals without needing overtime before falling to Cap.

The huge division was marked by strong performances by residential colleges, which are traditionally overshadowed by eating clubs in the later rounds. Though Mathey is a familiar face in the semifinals, due to high turnout and a relatively easy draw, upsets provided an opportunity for Wilson and Forbes to join them among the final four teams. All told, three of the six residential colleges reached the semis, a feat that only one of 10 eating clubs managed.

Cap, as always, brought strong numbers, but it fell one victory short of its second title in the last four years.

Football was relatively unscathed in its trek to the championship. The squad came out of the eight-team large bracket, dispatching Track & Field in that final, and defeated Global Zero in the semifinals in a meeting of the two returning Final Four teams.

The football team eliminated six members of Cap before its second player was disqualified in the championship match, taking a lead it would never relinquish.

The medium bracket also held to form, as Basketball and Men’s Club Soccer met in the finals. The cagers had difficulty putting Club Soccer away, reaching overtime and going neck-and-neck through the ten-player period until a two-on-one advantage finally swing the game to Basketball, the 2009 champion.

Although the end result was expected – Global Zero returned to the Final Four by defeating H2O Mega (Water Polo), the rest of the small bracket saw some surprises. Those two teams were met in the semifinals by a pair of unexpected foes from the Whig-Clio building: a Whig-Clio team and Debate. Each group pulled an upset to get that far; Debate defeated Club Volleyball in the quarterfinals and Whig-Clio eliminated Sprint Football.

But although certain teams will have fond memories of pulling off an upset, this will be remembered by most as the tournament in which Football finally broke through to win a championship.