Student Activities Blogs

James Ngo

L&L + Miguel: A Dodgeball Story

October 26, 2009

It’s Saturday morning. I wake up cold, wondering if my heater will ever work. I make sure to get dressed quickly and head out of the building straight to South Dining Hall. There I meet my friends Amanda, Chris, and Jackie. We chat a little and then finish our breakfast. As we prepare to leave, there is a burst of excitement. We are ready. Ready to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

So goes the story of our adventures with the Special Olympic Dodgeball Tournament that recently happened Saturday, October 24th. My Community Outreach Community of Practice (CoP) Language & Literacy (L&L) decided to form a team consisting of myself, Andrew L, Amanda N, Chris R, Jackie H, and the infamous Miguel C (yes, transportation Miguel). With such an awesome team dynamic, we naturally came up with an equally awesome name. “L&L + Miguel” as I think of it, is some sort of tribute to John & Kate + 8 with Miguel being the child of our CoP. But I digress.

In terms of the actual tournament, our team faced some strong opponents. Our first run was cut short by the strength of the “Purple People” (the Special Projects CoP), a team which would later go on to take third place in the Co-Rec division. I would like to give a quick shout out to Special Projects for representing Community Outreach with a nice trophy and wonderful run. Likewise, thank you for such a magnificent event. Great thanks to Brittni Paliotta for also organizing and running a successful tournament.

After our brutal first round defeat, we decided that we could definitely do much better. In the loser’s bracket, our first match was against the Health & Human Services (HHS) CoP. Although the battle came close, we took the win and went on. I can say that one of my highlights of this tournament was the fact that we got to play Special Projects and HHS. I always enjoy seeing people in Community Outreach helping to support each other’s programs. This is also one of the reasons why I love Community Outreach so much. There is a level of connectedness among the student leaders and pride in saying that we represent Community Outreach and our programs we are passionate about.

Unfortunately, our luck ran short again. We failed to win our next match and were eliminated from the tournament. Despite our team’s loss, I feel that in the bigger picture, the tournament was a success. All of the games ran smoothly, there were a good number of teams playing, and Community Outreach had a fair share of representatives at the tournament. I have to express my thanks for being able to participate in this wonderful event to support an even more extraordinary cause with the Special Olympics branch in Connecticut.

In the end, even though our team didn’t win a trophy for our actual play, we did get acknowledged for best team uniforms. You just can’t beat L&L’s creativity with the matching headbands and socks. Brown and pink are just classy colors.