2012 Dodgeball Recap: Men's Lacrosse wins championship

After nine hours, eight rounds and 102 games on Thursday, one team was left standing as champions of the 2012 dodgeball tournament: Men’s Lacrosse. The lacrosse team defeated Tiger Inn in the championship match after reaching the final four for the first time in recent memory.

The 2012 event was dominated by sports teams, as five of the six finalists of the small, medium and large brackets were varsity squads. Basketball defeated Sprint Football to reach its third Final Four in four years, while Track upset defending overall champion Football in the large bracket final.

Residential colleges saw a decreased turnout this year, allowing eating clubs to dominate the huge bracket. After only one reached the semifinals last year, eating clubs took all four slots on Thursday, as T.I. eventually defeated Cottage for the huge bracket championship.

As always, certain matches were overshadowed by conflict and accusations of foul play. A match between Tigers for Israel and Business Today sent tempers flaring, and there was as much yelling as there was playing in the semifinal game between Basketball and T.I. But the final contest was relatively argument-free, as Men’s Lacrosse took an early lead and closed out a stellar tournament.

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We watched eight hours of dodgeball and live-blogged all the way through. Here are the highlights of our dodgeball live blog in condensed form:

1) A Fight Breaks Out: In the Tigers for Israel-Business Today matchup in the small bracket, tempers flared after one BT student claimed he had not been hit, and yelling ensued between the two sides. After leaving for a minute, the student then came back with another friend and began pushing and trying to put a TFI member in a headlock. It was quickly separated by cooler heads. Yikes.

2) No Three-peat: Global Zero and Football, winners of their respective brackets in each of the last two years, were taken down on Thursday. GZ’s last two players were called out for violations after they stepped over the mid-line, a call that is rarely made, especially late in games. Football won the entire tournament last year but was taken down by a deep Track team in the large bracket final.

3) Why Cheating in Dodgeball is like International Relations: Michael Walzer says that for a war to be determined as just, it must have two qualities: Jus ad bellum and Jus in bello. Ad bellum means the reason for going to war must be just (i.e. not aggressive), and in bello means the acts within the war must be just (i.e. not bombing civilians). In Dodgeball, just like in international politics, there are two types of cheating: Jus ad bellum (i.e. bringing in people to play not in your group) and Jus in bello (i.e. claiming that you weren’t actually hit). Some groups are worse violators of one but not the other.

4) Last Man Standing: Kevin Henneck of Business Today was the last man alive for his team, staring down a 10-deep squad in Club Sailing. Henneck caught a few, hit a few, and came all the way back for the victory. "I went after them one after the other,” he said. “I selected the general order I wanted to get after it, and then waited for the opportunities." Henneck is also a sports writer for The Daily Princetonian, not that it helped the ‘Prince’ against Club Soccer.

5) Jokes on Jokes on Jokes:

Associate Sports Editor Shayan Rakhit – “SASA [South Asian Students Association] just took down Shakespeare Company. The colonies strike back against the empire!”

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Associate Sports Editor for Projects Eric Levenson – “TFI beat rifle Club initially but the refs ruled there was rampant cheating, so they will go to a 10-10 overtime … My sources indicate that TFI began the game with 20 people, and ended with 21. So, yeah.”

Prince news editor Teddy Schleifer, on the Basketball-Sprint Football matchup – “One of the most successful teams at Princeton against one of the least.”

Sports Editor Kevin Whitaker: “Sprint Football is trying to recruit us to play with them. So, this is like every Activities Fair ever.”

Luke Armour of the lacrosse team, via Twitter – “Tiger lacrosse facing off against Tigers for Israel in school-wide dodgeball tournament. Could get ugly. Oy.”