Dodgeball Perfection

We now have another reason that Walker Building is like a 3rd world country: broken windows. It appears that the construction crews, who’ve been on window-washing platforms all around the building the last couple weeks to put grout in the grooves on the outside of the building and to replace the caulk around the windows, cracked a window in Amber O.’s office this morning. Amber didn’t really think too much of it early on, but as the day progressed the crack lengthened by about 4-5 feet and started to spiderweb. So she notified the office, who got OPP down there to take a look. They got pretty concerned at the amount of cracking, and the fact that the large window is not safety glass, meaning that it poses a large health hazard to Amber’s desk, right below the window. So as a stopgap measure until they can get the window replaced, they duct-taped the cracks on the inside — and on the outside — of the window. Yep, an OPP guy actually went above and beyond the call of duty, and climbed outside onto the ledge to tape the outside. It should be noted that this office is on the 4th floor. Yeah… You wouldn’t catch me out there for anything, that’s for sure!
I’ve been a bit sore all day today, mostly because of two nights in a row of IM sports. On Monday night we had arena football. We had a couple of replacement players to play receiver, because Monday was the only date we could get, and our original WRs had to be out of town at a geosci conference somewhere. And somehow I got roped into being the starting center, so over the past few weeks I’ve had to learn how to snap. So for IM arena football, it’s 4-on-4 on a short field, uses a foam football (which is dumb), each team gets 4 downs to try to score (no first downs), there are two 10-minute halves with a running clock (only stoppages for injuries), and if a player is flagged for a penalty, he must sit out for the next play and cannot be replaced (which gives the other team a 1-man advantage). So for our first game, we won it by forfeit, because the other team didn’t show up. At least we were guaranteed of not going winless on the night. So for the second game, we got waxed 34-0. Ouch. Four touchdowns and three safeties. Not good. I had at least three dump-off catches that I got good yardage on, but we still couldn’t punch it in. And then in the third game we lost 21-7. We would’ve had 14 points, but Steve, who was breaking away for his 2nd touchdown and had nothing but green astroturf in front of him, suddenly cramped up in both calves as he sprinted past the ten yard line, and promptly crumpled and fell flat on his face at about the eight. Steve’s okay now, but at least we gave the IM trainers something to do. One thing the arena football debacle made clear for us yet again: all these 19- and 20-year old undergrads are much more athletic and in much better shape than we mid-20s grad students are. Sigh.
Last night we had the IM dodgeball tournament. There was enough meteo interest that we split into two full teams, and we played on separate nights. For our team, we had a definite strategy: Dan, Jeff [Grabon] & I were the runners to get our three balls on the right side of the centerline. I toss mine back to Moyer right away behind the attack line, who tries to peg one of the retreating players, and then if Walter, Steph or I got a ball and one of Dan, Jeff or Moyer didn’t have one, we’d toss it to them since they had the strongest arms. And for the most part Steph was retrieving balls for us that went out of play, which was huge for us. Last year we didn’t have much of a team strategy, and it showed as we went 1-7. Well, this time we went a perfect 5-0 on the night!! In the first game we didn’t even lose a player! A couple times we also got down to just two players, at which point we called time out in order to get Moyer and either Dan or Jeff into the game, which in two games helped us battle back from being down 6 players to 2 to come back and win. I only got out twice from when people caught my throws, never got hit myself, and got two people out — including the last person in our last game, to clinch our playoff berth. It was pretty sweet, I threw at the same time as Moyer & Grabon, but since they throw harder, their balls got to the guy first, causing him to turn around just in time for my ball to hit him square in the back. 🙂 So our quest for the elusive IM Block will continue on Monday night in the dodgeball playoffs! We’ll have to make sure to bring the rule book and clarify it with the officials before the games though, because tonight the other meteo team got screwed at least twice because the refs blatantly disregarded rules that are very explicitly stated in the official IM rule book (they did it once in our game too). Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident in intramural athletics here at PSU. It’s so aggravating when the IM refs don’t even know basic rules about the sports they’re officiating. For example: last summer in IM softball we even had to get out the rule book and explain to one of the refs what foul territory was — and then she had to radio her supervisor to make sure we were right! WHAT?!?!? Poor officiating due to poor judgment calls is one thing, but is it really too much to ask for the refs actually to know the rules that are black-and-white?