Within the Londonderry High School community, this is a exciting time of the year. It’s dodgeball time.
When the school’s annual fall fundraising dodgeball tournament arrives, LHS students make up teams with friends and fellow athletes in hopes of having fun and winning bragging rights which allow them to proclaim themselves champions – while helping out a good cause – around LHS for a while.
The tournament raises funds for Little Acts of Kindness, a Londonderry High School program established to help members of the LHS community in need. Funds from this program might be used to buy a backpack for a needy student or to help a family which has suffered a fire or something of the sort.
The 2016 tournament got rolling with opening-round play in the LHS gym on the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 9, with some 16 teams participating. Then this Wednesday, Nov. 16 from 3-5 and the next night from 6-8 more teams will be weeded out with the latter evening ending with the title match. That play will take place after Londonderry Times press time.
The 2015 dodgeball champs are back, in name at least, with the Ball of Duty crew in search of a title repeat. Last November that championship crew – which included Pete Navarro, Nick Vanini, Nick Salcito, Merrill Neiman, and Sean Snyder – bagged the crown by beating the previously-unbeaten Jumpmen in electrifying final round, sudden-death action.
Late on that final night of play, the final squads left vying for the championship included Ball of Duty, The Jumpmen, The Baller-inas, the uniquely-named 100 Percent Testosterone crew, and a contingent called Pinkerton Academy.
With the 2016 Londonderry High School fall varsity athletic season not having produced any champions this autumn, there are Lancers who are all kinds of pleased to take part in additional competitive action before the winter varsity sports campaign gets rolling officially in a few weeks.
Around the halls of Londonderry High in the days leading up to the opening-round play on Nov. 9, LHS student/athletes were hard to miss in mustard-colored t-shirts bearing the team name Mustard Bottle Boys and a rainbow of other, impossible-to-miss garb.
Over the years, teams have taken great pride in coming up with colorful and unique names for themselves as well, and they’ve done themselves proud again this fall. Among the squads competing in the games are groups named The Yolkers, Subscribe to Elsewhere, The Independent Women, The Handsome Idiots, and a crew called The Optical Dodgers.