Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow
It’s 60 degrees with a light drizzle, and competitors are slightly shivering as the sun sets. They wouldn’t want to go swimming in this. But they’re standing poolside, so it might just happen if they lose the game, something called battleship.
It’s not the game with little plastic pegs and tiny boats. This is real battle with a real ship, three to a canoe, yelling, throwing water, while one in the water pushes/steers. Basically, a team tries to fill up an opponent's canoe with water and sink it. Rules are few and vary upon location, but no bailing and no ramming are two, despite the rumors.
“I didn’t know how freezing it would be, but I love it. It’s pure chaos,” said Logan Demeter of team Operation Overload, which on this chilly night was trying to sink team Fatties 2.0.
Battleship is the latest development in Grand Canyon University Intramural Sports that, combined with innertube water polo, bring a GCU flavor to the more traditional 25 sports played by roughly 6,000 students this academic year.
With five outdoor swimming pools on campus, students tend to like the water. Except when it’s a rare drizzling and 60 degrees.
When the whistle blows, the teams charge at, oh, maybe 2 miles an hour across the pool, filling up one-gallon and five-gallon buckets with water to throw with a variety of battle cries.
“It’s surprising, it’s really tiring,” said student worker Jake Laufenberg, overseeing the competition in the Grove pool recently.
Operation Overload slowly sinks in less than five minutes.
“I tried to catch the water,” said Demeter.
Fatties 2.0 was clinical, dispatching the Fatties in the second of three rounds in a minute less than the first time, the distant, gurgled cries of “nooooo” coming from their opponents.
Fatties 2.0 is ironic. The star is a very slight young woman named Taylor Waltermire. Her teammate says she is so light it helps keep the three-seat plastic canoe riding high. But Waltermire’s port-side scoop of water with a five-gallon bucket, lift, and heave over the stern to the opponent's boat is a powerful blindside.
“I prefer the five-gallon bucket,” she said, though admitting she's no weightlifter.
“Grit,” said teammate Will Haak.
He recalled the team's second-place finish last semester.
“We lost to a bunch of dudes,” Waltermire said.
This whole thing was dreamed up by Intramural Sports Manager Mike Fox, who had played it in college. While sports like kickball and Ultimate Frisbee have become popular favorites, and volleyball, flag football and basketball are old standbys of fiery competition, Fox also added sports with a GCU signature.
“With GCU’s year-round pool access, we wanted to take advantage of the great weather and offer students a truly unique experience,” said Fox, adding that offering diverse and creative sports bring in more students to try new things.
The 462 participants in battleship and innertube water polo played abbreviated seasons to seed the teams in a tournament. Battleship finished its tournament Tuesday night with the championship won by Blink 132.
But on a night earlier in the semester, it was all Fatties 2.0. They used lightning quick bailing and the lone weapon – a water gun – to sink their opponent's battleship in the last round, again.
“We are not good at this sport,” said Demeter, who plays many intramural sports as a former high school athlete. “Some are more serious, especially when it comes to basketball. But I try to keep it fun. That’s the point of intramurals, right?”
When four teams are in the pool, there is more strategic warfare, pitting teams against each other, but in this one-on-one, Fatties 2.0 couldn’t pinpoint one method to their winning madness.
“We don’t even know what it is,” said Waltermire, shivering.
Teammate Easton Chaffee swam over for an answer.
“Shoot them with the water gun, get them (mad),” he said. “You got to act like you don’t want to play and then you …”
Bam. You're blasted.
Minutes later, you find yourself slowly sinking to your neck, still sitting in the canoe seat.
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at mike.kilen@gcu.edu
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