The registration line strung down the stairs inside the Victory Training Center. At registration, each individual chose competitions and tournaments to be a part of throughout the night including a dodgeball tournament, banana eating contest and Yahtzee tournament, to name a few. When registration was completed, the evening began.
Following a short meeting to lay down the ground rules, the doors were locked, pizza was ordered and the fun started. Brackets were organized for each tournament and the dodgeball tournament stole the show.
DODGEBALL
Seven teams entered the tournament with four athletes on each team. Each team was seeded according to their skill levels, The Troggs (Jake Filkins, Cole Tobin, Brayden Wienke and Joe Raygor) were the top seed as they were significantly older in age as the counselors.
The second seeded SKULLS! had two coaches (Kevin Black and Ryan Turner) along with Adam Holmquist and his guest, Tyler Johnson, plus Jack and Conor Hines. Tyler and Zac Weyer, Alec Waite and Tyson Bystrom's team, Massacre earned the third seed whereas the Brew Crew was seeded fourth with Jens Lantz, Zach Ristou, Max Peterson and Dennis Schultz. The Punishers (Mathias Tobin, Tim Feia, Matthew Peterson and Hank Holdorf), Doomsday Bulldogs (Garrett Loomis, Shaun Kaiser, Winston Bystrom and Kody Dudgeon) and Ricky Bobby's Flaming Cars (Anders Lantz, Ian Ruble, Derek Koller and Austin Freeland).
The first round started with the Brew Crew defeating The Punishers before a very large upset, the Doomsday Bulldogs over Massacre in two straight games. Ricky Bobby's Flaming Cars nearly pulled another upset, but the SKULLS prevailed with a quarer final victory, but not before two heroic perfomances by Anders Lantz and Austin Freeland. The Troggs received a first round bye.
In the semi-finals, The Troggs defeated the Brew Crew, but not before a close call as they dropped the second game and were down to one athlete in the third and final game. The same held true for the other semi-final games. The Doomsday Bulldogs defeated the SKULLS in the second game with outstanding play by Garrett Loomis.
The championship finals pitted the top two teams in a best 3 out of 5 series. The battle took one hour and twenty-five minutes and including much arguing between athletes and officials. The Troggs finally emerged victorious after much exhaustion.
In addition to the team champions (The Troggs), Victory School of Wrestling would also like to recognize the All-Tournament Team. These athletes displayed tremendous leadership, skill and dodging ability as they nearly impossible to hit with the ball. The tournament put on display some of Victory's top dodgeball players, including Player of the Tournament Brayden Wienke of The Troggs, but only a few made the glorious All-Tournament Team:
Anders Lantz, Ricky Bobby's Flaming Cars
Garrett Loomis, Doomsday Bulldogs
Brayden Wienke, The Troggs
Max Peterson, Brew Crew
CRAZY MONKEY
Another exciting event during The Grand Hullabaloo was the Crazy Monkey. The Crazy Monkey was a banana eating contest with participants eating as many bananas as they could in three minutes. Many pounds of bananas were purchased, but they were gone quickly as the youngest group (5th grade and younger) ate nearly all of the bananas in the first three minutes. Ian Ruble was quickly dubbed the favorite of the event, but he was overcome by Anders Lantz and Austin Freeland who each at 5.5 bananas in three minutes. Following the three minutes, it was realized that there were not enough bananas to hold another age level competition, and being that it was 2:30am, the other age levels were cancelled. However, Alec Waite was determined to dominate the 5.5 standard that was set and pounded 6 bananas in the three minute time limit.
DOOR PRIZES
The winner of each competition won a special door prize. The prizes included footballs, frisbees, cowboy hats, air freshners, flashlights and much more. There was great excitement and anticipation as individuals chose their favorite prizes. Joe Raygor was extremely pleased to have the opportunity to trade his team bandana in for a cowboy hat after The Troggs victory in dodgeball.
WHY SLEEP?
Many of the individuals were set on not sleeping throughout the whole night. However, by 4:30am, many of them had fallen asleep on the wrestling mats watching movies. Thanks to Alec Waite, we were fortunate enough to have a video projector with movies on the wrestling room wall. The Playstation also drew a lot of attention, but by 6:45am the last remaining non-sleeper fell off while playing a game on the Playstation. Although many believe they stayed up all night, no one was able to do so. No sleep will definately be the goal for many of these kids next year.
