We have now played the first 3 games of the fall season (and won them all! Booyeah!). Overall, it has been a good experience learning the basics so far and getting a little more comfortable on the court. But I’ll be giving a breakdown of the second and third games in this entry.  

    I’ll start with game 2 (October 11): You Can’t Sit with Us vs You Go Glen Coco! For this game, we were missing a couple teammates, so we needed to recruit our first spare. As far as I could tell, this didn’t affect our team dynamic very much…mostly because there hadn’t been much time to establish one in the first place. This week, I was a bit under the weather during the game, so I did not retain my all-star status from first week. But my team still did alright. We had a good lead going into the second half but started losing it pretty quickly. We managed to hang on to the lead until the end, but it was getting a little concerning. There were some incredible dodgeball feats pulled off by the more experienced players when they were the last ones from my team on the court and it’s definitely thanks to them that we won. Not that anyone is really expecting the newbies to bust out some point saving moves when we end up in the same position, but a girl can dream!

    Working off of last week’s constructive feedback, I think I improved ever so slightly in the right guard position is where I feel most comfortable. The appeal for me comes mostly from fake throwing to deter the other team from attacking which goes to my head as a fun little power trip. I managed to stop a player on the other team from retrieving a ball before it rolled back onto our side, so I’d say I’m learning how to play this position better. I also still enjoy sprinting for the balls at the start of each round just to get energized and help me get my head in the game right away. I’m somewhat concerned I would just zone out and immediately take a ball to the head if I don’t get really into the game from the get-go.

Last week it was game 3 (October 18): You Can’t Sit with Us vs That’s So Fetch! This was the first week when everyone on my team was able to make it, so we actually had 2 spares for the whole game instead of just 1. The games aren’t so intense that 2 spares are strictly needed but it was nice to be on the bench for a few extra minutes in order to watch the game without worrying about what I was doing with my own body in the moment. The extra break allowed me to observe the game play a little more than usual and watch what the more experienced players were doing and really look at how they played the game and adapted to the loss of the players from certain positions.

There was also a referee in training, so I was watching him too and I learned what the rules are that determine which side has to throw ball. Up to this point, I was always looking to the ref to tell us which side had to throw but if I do that, I’m taking my eyes off the players on the other team and opening myself up to getting hit. With this new information, I should be better able to keep my eyes on the prize, so to speak. The rules are fairly straight forward, the team with advantage has 10 seconds to throw a ball. This 10 second count restarts any time a player on either team throws a ball. The team with more balls will always have advantage. If the balls are evenly distributed between the teams, then the team with more players on the court has advantage. If that is also equal between the teams, then the team that hasn’t thrown the most recent ball has advantage. And finally, if neither team has thrown yet, the team who won the last point has advantage. I’m still not sure how that works for the very first throw of the game, but it has yet to be an issue. If your team has advantage, and the ref counts down the 10 seconds without anyone throwing, then you have to give all your balls to the other team. This is something you definitely want to avoid because it gives the other team a huge advantage, when you have no balls for your guards and nothing to block with. This situation has also not happened in any games so far and I don’t expect it to although we have thrown at the last second several times.

    At the end of the second half, I was still on the court when we entered sudden death. My team was ahead by 2 points, so we would win despite the outcome of the sudden death round, but I was still determined to try my best. Unfortunately, that did not end with me being a hero for my team. Instead, it ended with me getting hit in the face while reaching for a ball. I could have actually caught the ball because my face deflected it straight up into the air, but I was too dazed from the unexpected blow to my head to think fast enough and realize that in the moment. It’s still a little tricky figuring out what to do and what to pay attention to and what the rules are with everything happening so fast, but it’s slowly coming easier.

After 3 games, we have now played every other team in the women’s league. We have won all 3 of our games and all of the other teams each have 1 win and 2 losses. So, we’re off to a strong start but there are still 6 games left in the season which means we’ll be playing each team two more times. Only time will tell how long we can keep up our winning streak! I feel like we’re working better as a team and the other new players and I have already learned a lot but that’s surely true for the other teams, so we’ll need to keep our heads in the game and give it our best shot every week!

Here’s to continuing the winning streak!

-Cat

Cat’s journey will continue in her fourth article.

Past articles:

Post 1

Post 2

*Webmaster was away so these are going to be posted a little later than they were submitted. Apologies to our resident blogger Cat!

The fall season has officially started for Dodgeball Winnipeg so this week I’ll be sharing with you the experience of my first game in the women’s league and some of the basics of dodgeball that I picked up. If I’m being totally honest with all of you out there in the abyss of the internet, I should tell you that I was a little nervous about this first game. I didn’t really know what to expect and despite having attended a couple Dodgeball Winnipeg events…or perhaps because of watching high level players doing their thing at those events, I was a little intimidated by the idea of showing up and ending up as a useless player on the court. As a person who tends to immediately be great at everything I do, that idea is horrifying. So, I had a bit of a hard time convincing myself that I just had to go to the gym and it would be a valuable experience even if I failed horribly and embarrassed myself and could never show my face again in the downward spiral that would surely follow because trying is the first step towards success failure. I’m glad I did end up going though because I had a blast! And now it will be much easier to get motivated to show up because I’ve met the other wonderful ladies on my team and we had a lot of fun playing dodgeball together.

But I digress, let me get back to the beginning of game 1 (October 4): You Can’t Sit with Us vs Wear Pink on Wednesdays. I got to the gym a little early so that I could watch the ends of the games happening before mine as a quick refresher on how the game is played. My brother happened to be there because he had a game earlier and he gave me some sage advice. He shared with me that the secret to doing well in this team-based sport is team work. I know! It’s shocking! But it’s true. After that last minute advice, it was time to enter the gym and meet my team. I had a vague idea of who everyone on my team was because we have a group chat going where we had previously introduced ourselves, shared our goals for the season and we also use it to keep everyone on the same page about details of the next game. But this was the first time I had met anyone in person except our team captain. Each team has 8 players and on mine, we have 5 players with previous dodgeball experience (some with a few years) and 3 newcomers, including myself. Which makes for a good mix on the court at the start with about a half the players not knowing what to do and the other half able to give us some advice as we went. It also helped that there was some excellent captaining happening on our side to keep everyone working as a team. The other newbies and I seemed to be catching on by the end of the first half. And I felt like I had a good grasp on what I was supposed to be doing by the end of the game (which we won 7-3! Yay!).

    I’m really happy with the team I ended up being placed on. Everyone is really nice, encouraging, and the experienced players provided very useful feedback on my throws and how to better play the positions. Positions, I should note, which I didn’t even realize existed a week ago. I think I have already developed a preference for right guard and runner which included running for the balls at the start of each round and pretty much constantly faking throws to keep the other team on their toes. But I’m going to try to play the other positions throughout the season too to get a better grasp on each part of the team. I want to be a well-rounded beginner by the end of this season.

After having figured out the positions in the first half, with my right guard preference, I started to grasp some of the strategy at play in the second half. I learned there’s actually a difference in the strategic position of the guards on the court either more defensive or offensive depending on which team has to throw next. I plan on figuring out the basics for the middle positions in the next couple weeks and then going on from there.

The other important thing I noted has to do with my dodgeball gear. I made sure to bring my knee pads and elbow sleeve for my throwing arm to help reduce the stress on my arm which led to the one-handed driving home from my last post (and it seems to have worked!). Also, as someone who is constantly cold, I wore leggings and a long sleeve shirt. I’m told the leggings are a good call but the long-sleeved shirt was not a wise choice. Most of the other players wore t-shirts and tank tops and I will be doing the same next week. I did a lot of sprinting and may have been overly enthusiastic in my guarding fake outs so I was uncomfortably warm. As a bonus, I have include a picture of me below in the previously mentioned too much clothing which I will be ditching to hopefully end up a little less hot and sweaty. Running out of water halfway through the second half of our game probably didn’t help with that. So, I’ll be bringing my largest water bottle next time and ideally won’t end up with a mouth drier than a failed attempt at the saltine challenge.  

    I would like to conclude this entry in the spirit of thanksgiving which most of us celebrated this past weekend and say I am thankful that I wasn’t as sore as previous post-dodgeball experiences. I still had full use of my arm after the game and only had a bit of minor DOMS in my upper throwing arm and back a couple days later. But overall, I learned a lot and had fun playing. After speaking with the other newbies on my team after the game, I was a little relieved to hear that they had also felt a bit apprehensive about the first game and were also a little hesitant to come to the first game (not that any of us considered not showing up very seriously). Although I suspect there was a little less existential spiralling for them. But we all enjoyed our first dodgeball experience and expect to be much more enthusiastic about showing up to our next game!

Here’s to making the second game as fun as the first! I’ll see some of you on the court!

-Cat

*Cat’s journey continues in her third article, which can be found here.

Past articles: Post 1