After achieving stratospheric success in the realm of basketball during the 2014-15 season, women’s basketball head coach Courtney Banghart has decided to part ways from the team she took to a 31-1 record last season. She has signed a contract to begin coaching The Daily Princetonian dodgeball team in preparation for the annual University Dodgeball Tournament this coming April.
“After seeing the heights my team achieved last year, it’s quite probable they could get to the NCAA tournament without any coaching at all,” Banghart explained. “It was time for me to take my talents to where they were needed most.”
Few cases could be more pitiful than the ‘Prince’ dodgeball team, which was mercilessly mauled in the first round of the 2015 tournament by the Princeton football team. After hitting no more than five players, the ‘Prince’ leadership understood it needed to revamp its squad to be competitive down the line.
“You really can’t do much better than Coach Banghart,” Anna Mazarakis ’16 said. “Between winning the Naismith award and her team’s performance last year, she was the obvious choice to help us turn this team into champions.”
Mazarakis is the outgoing Editor-In-Chief of the ‘Prince.’
Banghart enters this role realizing she is not working with many offensive weapons. The ‘Prince’ has struggled mightily in previous years at recruiting top dodgeball talent, and many of the current members have been left dejected at the thought of being blown out in the tournament once more.
Seeing the difficulty of the situation, Banghart intends to use unique and untested methods to turn this team into a winning program. She says much of her training for this team has been inspired by the hit movie “Dodgeball.”
“They’ll be waking up at 5:30 a.m., and begin the day with two hours of dodging wrenches,” Banghart said. “This will be followed by an hour of weightlifting. The second workout of the day, beginning at 4:30 p.m., will consist of three hours of sprints, followed by another round of weightlifting.”
When questioned how ‘Prince’ staffers would have the time to actually produce the newspaper itself, Banghart dismissed such concerns as irrelevant.
“Here are the options — pass your classes, produce a newspaper, win a dodgeball tournament. There’s only enough time in the day for two,” Banghart said.
Indeed, this issue of the ‘Prince’ will actually be the last one until the fall semester, because the staff will be busy getting swole to take down the football team.
Despite their newfound commitment to dodgeball, the ‘Prince’ staff knows that they will continue to be overlooked in the tournament.
“It’s been an uphill battle — we’re still definitely the underdogs,” Tom Pham ’17 said, “but I know I’m ready to make the commitment to the ‘Prince,’ and I think that the rest of these guys are too.”
Pham is the outgoing sports editor for the ‘Prince.’
“It’s going to be amazing, though,” Pham said. “I can’t wait to get back out there in April and show them what we’ve got.”
*This article is part of The Daily Princetonian's annual joke issue. Don't believe everything you read on the internet!*
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