By Jenna Baker & Natalie Hanna

On Thursday, November 2, the Baseball Team earned its title of second-time champion in ASB’s annual Dodgeball Inferno. Dodgeball Inferno is a round-robin dodgeball competition between 16 of GHC’s teams and clubs, who each hope to take home the dodgeball champion belt. 

The Baseball Team went up against DECA in the championship round, surprising many in the audience as DECA was one of the few non-athlete teams in the competition.

Baseball took out many other athletic teams to win, including both the Boys and Girls Soccer Teams, Cheerleading Team, Cross Country, Boys Water Polo, Dance Team, Softball Team, Varsity Football, and Girls Basketball. The non-athletic teams including DECA, Robodox, ASB, U S.A.V.E., and the Filipino Culture Club certainly held their own, however.

“It was super fun and it was really well run,” junior and soccer team member Obedo Perez-Murdock said. “My team and I were finalists which was super great. We worked well together and it brought us closer together.”

The audience found that the most entertaining part of the game was the roasts ASB announced on the speaker during the games. These roasts were directed towards each team in hopes of throwing off players mid-game. 

Before the tournament, teams joined ASB’s Google Classroom page, where they submitted “roasts,” either for their own or other teams in the competition. However, the teams signed a waiver agreeing to be roasted before the tournament, and all roasts were approved by administration ahead of time to ensure they were all in good fun.

“I’m personally not shy when it comes to speaking in front of an audience like that so I liked the opportunity,” senior and ASB member Michael Suarez said. “It was a really cool experience to speak in front of everyone and have my own effect on the event.”

Teams could have ten players on the court as well as two substitutes. In a dodgeball game, players line up touching the wall on opposite sides of the court, waiting for a signal to run to the middle of the court and grab a dodgeball. To get a player out, players have to hit a player on the opposing team with a ball without making contact with the ground first. If a player gets hit on the head, however, they are safe to stay in the game. 

To get a teammate back in the game, players have to catch the ball that is thrown from the opposing team midair. In Dodgeball Inferno, at the end of 5 minutes, the team with the most players left on the court was declared the winner of the round, unless all players on a team were already out, in which case they forfeited.   

Dodgeball Inferno was an evening full of thrill and excitement, which allowed dodgeball players to shine and audience members a place to support GHC’s vast array of sports teams and academic clubs.