Left to Right: Junior Milton Hernandez, Seniors Jennifer Crespo, Agatha Silva, Fidel Laurena, Max Batista, Katherin Machado, Jill Tramondozzi prepare to play.
Malden High’s class of 2021 hosted their first annual dodgeball tournament last Monday at the Finn Gym, starting at 2:45 and concluding at around 4pm. Students had until the ninth of November to registered their teams at $35 per a team of eight. Tickets to observe the tournament were just two dollars and all the proceedings went to the class of 2021.
Originally, the idea was based off of the class of 2017, who hosted the event before, and so the sophomore class officers sought help of guidance counselor Heather Northrop, since she was the adviser for the class of 2017. Northrop explained the aspects of the tournament, they decided to “modify it into [their] own version to make it a lot easier” as stated by President Harriet Shane Gerochi.
For each round, there are 12 balls lined in the middle of the field and both teams stand on the opposite sides of the gym. Once they are instructed to go by the referee, they must grab as many balls to take the opponents of the other teams. In order to throw the ball, they must stand behind the white line.
Gerochi added that one of the modifications that they made was limiting down the number of jailbreaks. A jailbreak is when an individual is able to catch the ball and got all the others to came back into the game. They cut most of that out due to a concern of the rounds dragging out for too long.
The group of students that won the entire tournament went by the name of Dirty Dodgers that consisted of seniors Samantha Duragano, Gustavo Silva, Kevin Phan, Antonio Ferreira, Hamzah Halaissi, Cristobal Marey, Douglas Oliveira and junior Shruti Pokharal.
All of the Maldonian Yearbook Staff including Duragano “wanted to come together as a group and have a nice, fun bonding experience“ along with lending a hand to support the sophomore class so she felt that “it was no brainer“ to participate. As for herself, Duragano was looking forward to “seeing how the tournament would go“ because she “never been to anything like that before“ to which she found that to be a cool thing because there was so much support upon the students and “how everything played out.”
Upon finding out that her team had won, Duragano “was a bit shocked“ although she sense a possibility of that outcome especially since the competition was tough. She would like to give thanks to her teammates for doing an “amazing job.“ Regardless, it was a great experience whether they won or not.
Although they were hoping for a bigger outcome of students to participate, they were however, please with the audience amount and the fact that “everyone enjoyed it.”
In the future, the class of 2021 is planning to host another tournament before the spring sports begin so it does not get in the way of students getting involved. Vice President Kenny Phan explained that “[they] raised a lot of fundraising” and that it “will contribute to a lot to all of [their] money that [they] have so far” and with the springtime coming up, the popularity will increase.
