On the weekend just gone, our 1st and 2nd team entered the South Coast Open Dodgeball tournament in Southampton with both teams (Imperial Wolverines I and II) reaching the quarter-finals and producing an all round solid result. The tournament report follows:

On Sunday 7th November we had 9 keen dodgeballers meet early in the morning in Waterloo station. We’d found out that 3 of the guys from the second team had dropped out for various reasons so it was not a great start to the day!

We managed to get our tickets to Sholing train station and boarded the train, although Ben “I’ll happily miss the train for a BK bacon double cheeseburger” Bell managed to cut it so fine that even Adam “I never panic. I’m the president.” Cutmore went a little pale.

After a couple of train changes and a “short” walk from the station to the leisure centre, we finally arrived. We were running a little late as Imperial were playing the first game of the tournament. After getting changed and quickly warming up, it was straight into the action!

The way tournament matches work is that you have five 2 minutes games and the team to have won the most out of that 5, wins the match.

The 1sts had their opening match against the best team in their group, the Derby Seahawks 1sts. After the first two games, we were level at 1-1. This was due to some brilliant throwing by Steve “I’m not too bad at running” Ndumbe and about 37 catches by Alan “Careful, or I’ll drop you” Soltani. After this, they changed their tactics and, catching us off guard, went on to win 4-1.

Fortunately, Imperial I then went on to win their next two matches 5-0 (Soton Dodgettes) and 3-2 (Portsmouth B) with brilliant team play all round. (We’re not going to mention that one of those matches was against Southampton women’s team… Ben Bell summed it up: “Either they’re all gonna be absolute dykes or amazing at Dodgeball. Or both!”).

Unfortunately, they were neither. Hence, the first team qualified second in their group and went on through to the quarters.

During all this, dark horses Imperial II, plus some borrowed players from the Derby 3rds, were steaming through their group as well. With Tom “I refuse to catch anything” Lowndes captaining the team, Dan “Suicide” Price getting someone out with virtually every throw and Scott “I’m a goalie, therefore I can catch” Edwards catching, they managed to win matches against the Soton Pirates 2nds and Winchester Reloaded, at times with only 4⁄6 players on the team! Their third match was against the reigning national champions, Jammy Dodgers, who happen to have two England players in their team. Despite some of our 1st team stepping in to help out, we were demolished as expected.

Still, the 2nds had qualified for the quarters as well and everyone was in great spirits!

The II’s had their quarter final first. They were up against the Southampton 1sts, whom were obviously in their home ground. We borrowed players from Derby 3rds but could not overcome their experience and strength. We took solace in the fact that the Soton 1sts went on to be runners up of the whole tournament. The II’s had fought a good fight.

The I’s had their quarter final against Minotaur Dodgeball. Their captain “the world hates me, so I’m gonna moan about every decision, even after I’ve won the game” was their only decent player and we were looking for a result. With some blistering throws from Rupert “These ****** balls are so ****** ****”.

Some brilliant catches from Adam “Throw together, Dodge alone” Cutmore saw us go 2-0 up. Unfortunately, a change in mentality from the Minotaurs led to them edging the next two games.

This left for a very tense final game. In the last 10 seconds both teams were down to two players each and the Minotaurs had all 3 balls. They threw one. Adam went for a heroic catch to wrap it up…and dropped.

Everyone was gutted and felt very hard done by. We had definitely been the better team and received nothing but praise from the Derby 1sts who would have been our semi-final opponents.

At the end of the day it was a great performance by all involved and we are looking forward to the University Championships at Warwick University on November 28th and a friendly against Royal Holloway University pencilled in for November 24th.

And never, ever forget the words which will be forever imortalised by the legend of dodgeball, Patches O’Houlihan; ‘If you can dodge a wrench…’