August 26th — If a complete stranger had walked into the Norris pool Tuesday night, they would have thought Lake State was nothing but a bunch of crazy people who had a thing for weird canoe sports. The stands were full of swimsuit clad college students screaming for their team. WLSO was cranking out old 90s tunes and various energetic beats. The pool was full of people, canoes and bright blue buckets.
Battleship has become an exciting “sport” at LSSU. It began last year when someone got the great idea of letting the students sink each other’s “battleship” in the pool with buckets of water. The rules are simple:
- No ramming the other teams’ boats.
- No bailing water out of your own canoe.
- No running away from the competition.
- Have fun.
The last team left standing wins the round.
To begin, three teams of four entered the silver and green canoes that lined the pool. Each player had a bucket as their weapon. The initial rounds were the seeding rounds for single elimination brackets.
After a lot of trial and error, as well as screaming, paddling and bucket throwing, the seeding rounds were over and the competition got fierce. There were a few teams that were caught running away or bailing their boat out; these infractions were immediately punished by the referees who threw buckets of water into their boats.
The semi finals were intense as two teams battled each other per round, instead of the previous three teams per round setup. People were throwing water at each other so enthusiastically that buckets were flying out of their hands. Nobody was safe from the splashing, even this reporter got a few buckets of water in the face as the battle raged on. Good thing my camera is waterproof.
The finals were between The Sturgeons and The Village People. The battle was intense. The Village People were the first to attack. About two minutes into the final round, The Village People lost a bucket. Later on, The Sturgeons lost a bucket as well which evened out the playing field. As the canoes filled with water they became harder to stabilize. Ultimately, tipping too much was what did them in and after 4 minutes, The Village People were beat and The Sturgeons came out victorious.
Nathan Rapp, Cassie Pflanzer, Sean Gerbe and Maddie Almquist of The Sturgeons all received dry intramural champion t-shirts as their prize.
Wish you would have come down to join in on the fun? Think you have what it takes to claim the Battleship title? Look for future announcements for upcoming Battleship tournaments.
lssucompass.wordpress.com 