Matt Hirji

DODGEBALL DEVOTEE Colten Yamagishi is spearheading the dodgeball record

U of A hopes to conquer dodgeball world record

What does it take to break the world record for the biggest dodgeball game?

Try 5,000 participants, 1,250 dodgeballs, 150 referees, and one determined university. It may be a tall order, but for Students’ Union Vice-President (Student Life) Colten Yamagishi, that’s what it will take if the University of Alberta wants to re-gain its spot in the record books.

“Of course I’m excited, but I’m kind of nervous about it at the same time too,” Yamagishi said.

“I guess a weird thing to relate it to would be those battles that they had during the world wars. When there were tons and tons of people lined up and just going crazy. You can’t picture it — you just have to be there to believe it.”

The world record dodgeball event has become a U of A staple since 2009, when more than 1,198 students gathered in the Butterdome to take the record for the most amount of participants in a single dodgeball game.

Since then, a rivalry has developed between the U of A and other universities across North America. Last January, more than 2,012 people filed into the Butterdome to reclaim the record after it was broken by the University of California, Irvine, who had held it with 1,745 players.

But in September, the UC, Irvine reclaimed the record with a game that included 4,000 participants.

Trumping that record is far from a small task. Rounding up 5,000 U of A students, faculty and alumni in the Butterdome this Friday to play in a single dodgeball game may seem like an impossible feat, but Yamagishi is optimistic that it can be accomplished.

“It takes lots of coordination and planning to figure out how it’s all going to work. Even when I saw the 2,000 people last year, that was almost unimaginable,” Yamagishi said.

Preliminary planning for the event started last summer and, since then, countless people have been intricately involved in the staging of Friday’s dodgeball event.

The Students’ Union, the Lister Dodgeball League, along with the Office of the Dean of Students, have spent a significant amount of time shaping how the event will run from start to finish.

And that doesn’t even account for the dozens of volunteers that will give their time on Friday to register participants and hand out more than 4,000 t-shirts, among other duties.

“But it’s really not that complicated of an event,” Yamagishi admitted. “You put a bunch of people into one place, you make sure that their bags and stuff don’t get lost, and you play dodgeball.”

While it may take a significant amount of elbow grease to make an event of such a scale a success, it’s not just about taking back the world record, in what has become an international rivalry between the U of A and the UC Irvine.

For Yamagishi, he says it’s also about creating an atmosphere that gives students the opportunity to feel connected with their campus community.

“People call it a pissing contest, or whatever. But besides that, the biggest reason for having this is because it’s just that many students getting together. The real value comes in with the engagement that students feel,” Yamagishi said.

“I always describe it as the biggest student engagement event of the year. This is the event where people who don’t normally participate in campus events are given the biggest opportunity to come out and really get a taste of what the student experience is all about. I think it’s just going to give people shivers when they are there.”

The Break the Record Event will take place at noon this Friday in the Butterdome. Registration will open at 10 a.m.

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