Dodgeball Glory Beckons for the Green Weed

Given a free weekend before the crush of the holiday season, most thirty-year-olds would idle away the hours. Perhaps going to a wine tasting, or tidying up around the house, or getting an early jump on their Christmas shopping. For a select few, however, this situation would present the perfect opportunity to enter the DC area Annual Charity Dodgeball Tournament.

Early Sunday morning – at least for this writer it was early – The Green Weed, led by captain Celia Prentice, majority owner Erik Prentice, and general manager Joshua Freeman, and rounded out by Ricard & Nicole of the Clan Ricard and the ever-talented Sisters Weiss (Delia and Nora), strode into the DCJCC seeking dodgeball glory, but instead were greeted with a rather rude surprise. What had been billed as a coed dodgeball tourney was actually an open tourney, meaning that all-male teams were allowed.

After getting their seeding (team #7, bracket #3), the Weed prepped for the round robin portion of the tourney. With twelve teams (four brackets of three), each team played all of the teams in its bracket – best two-out-of-three – to establish the seeding. The top seed in each bracket would get a bye in the first round of the single-elimination tournament.

The Weed opened up versus the Targets, another co-ed squad. Despite unfamiliarity with the format, the Weed shocked themselves with a dominant 2-0 trouncing of their foes. Their reward for this victory was a round off to scout the third team in their bracket, the all-male MD Crew squad. After watching an undermanned Targets squad lose to MD Crew in the first of the three-game set, Weed gunslinger Joshua Freeman was asked if he wanted to even up the sides by playing for the Targets. After both sides approved this arrangement, Freeman helped the Targets win the second game, and then took over the third game, closing out the MD Crew team from a one-vs-three position.

These results all but assured the Weed of a first round bye, but still their appetite for victory was not satiated. Squaring off against the all-male squad, the Weed took the first game after Freeman won another one-vs-three match-up. Game #2, however, was something entirely different. After an early war off attrition, the Weed seemed to have the game well in hand when rocket-armed Erik teamed with Nicole versus a sole MD Crew player. However, an ill-fated catch attempt gone awry by Prentice left Nicole mano y mano versus the last MD Crew member. After a few dodges on each side, Nicole let loose a ball that would have made pitcher Tim Wakefield proud. The ball dove down toward the Crew player's knees and glanced off his fingers as he attempted to make the catch. The Weed emerged victorious (2-0, 4-0) and had secured a first round bye.

In the second round of the elimination tourney, the Weed faced off against the Sparks, an orange-clad group of warriors who also featured the tournament most valuable player, a girl whose catching skills were absolutely unmatched throughout the afternoon. The matches were now best-out-of-five, and the Weed were a bit worried about the fatigue factor. However, in this match-up, that was not a concern. In the first game, Prentice ran roughshod over the opposition, essentially sealing the match with an early knockout-catch-knockout combo. Games #2 and #3 were similar routs, advancing the Weed to the semifinals.

The semifinals was comprised of two all-male teams, one team featuring five males, and our heroes the Weed. The Weed drew the first match-up, facing off versus the five-male squad. Game #1 was a back-and-forth affair, but the last players standing were Freeman and Ricard on the Weed and Tofurkey's lone female. Ricard dispatched her with a thundering ball, and the team was on to the second game. Games #2 and #3, while close, never seemed to be in doubt and the Weed continued their Hickory High-esque run to the Championship match. Going into the finals, the Weed had posted a shocking 4-0 mark, including a 10-0 match record!

The finals, however, were where the magical run ended. Despite having the capacity crowd behind them, they were simply out-gunned by the six-man squad, losing in straight sets, 3-0. The lone highlight from this portion of the day was the crowd loudly imploring the Weed girls to victory as the boys stood by on the sideline.

There were a thousand little plays this chronicler could never capture. Dodgeball is a fast-paced game and, when you're in the midst of it, you tend to develop tunnel vision. A few lasting memories would be Ricard and Erik's rhino charge to the frontlines once the whistle was blown, Delia “braining” some guy and almost knocking him over, Nicole's match-winning strike, Celia's critical catch in one of the earlier matches, and Nora and Josh firing a perfect one-two salvo to shore up a match. Even though they fell just short of taking home the title, the team still performed far above all expectations. At the end of the day, hard-earned victory dodgeballs in hand, the Weed went home secure in the knowledge that “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”

Submitted 11/21/05 by Josh Freeman.