How important is winning to you?
Would you cheat to get the job done?
Would you do anything it takes to get a W and the reward it brings?
These questions arose in my mind Thursday after my teammates and I were eliminated from the Rec Sports dodgeball playoffs.
After splitting the first four games of a first-round best-of-five series, the deciding game came down to sudden-death overtime, when after a long stalemate we were finally eliminated when our biggest player was clipped on the foot.
While the loss was extremely hard to take, the fifth game should have never gone to overtime.
Moments before time expired in regulation, one of our opponents was tagged in the foot with a thrown ball after it had deflected off the ball he was holding.
According to dodgeball rule 34976.732, section A, article two, if a ball hits you before hitting the floor, YOU’RE OUT.
Our opponent, who happened to be a large man with one of his team’s best throwing arms, apparently didn’t understand this rule and stayed in the game.
Since this is the first year dodgeball was offered as an intramural sport at Oregon, many of the game’s rules and nuances were still uncertain. The game’s biggest shortcoming is the lack of a true referee. There is an “official” on site who is only there to settle disputes as the last possible option. Otherwise, the game is self-officiated.
Two of us who had been knocked out of the game tried to point out to our opponent that he had been hit on the foot and should be out of the game. Our efforts were in vain, however, as he continued to deny the accusations. We got nothing more than a confused shoulder shrug from the “official.”
If our opponent went out of the game, we would have finished regulation ahead two players to one and advanced to the second round. But he stayed in; we couldn’t get the job done in overtime and I proceeded to make an ass of myself by yelling, swearing and telling the big guy he was a cheating-ass m—– f—— after the game.
I’ve always been a fan of self-officiated games. If you’re playing with honest people, self-officiating eliminates bad calls from officials who may not have the best view on a particular play. I’ll even give the benefit of the doubt to an opponent during most arguments — unless something is brutally obvious — just to keep an honest feel to the contest.
Ultimate Frisbee is a perfect example of successful self-officiating. Athletes go by a “spirit of the game” code that would make anybody feel like a dirtbag for trying to cheat.
But after Thursday, I’m no longer an advocate of self-officiating. I’ll take the occasional blown call from a referee over the temptation of an individual to help his own team by letting something go.
Hey, maybe the big guy got caught up in the moment and actually didn’t feel the ball hit his foot. But for an uber-competitive person like myself, advancing in the playoffs in any sport is too much to risk on a potentially biased call.
The worst part about all this is that I knew our opponents, and they’re a great bunch of guys. I’m on an intramural softball team with some of them, and it’s a shame that this incident happened.
But while there’s no hard feelings toward anyone — if I can’t move on with my life after losing a dodgeball series I have much, much bigger problems to worry about — Thursday’s happenings made me ask
myself some questions.
How important is winning to me?
Would I cheat to get the job done?
Would I do anything it takes to get a W and the reward it brings?
I’d do almost anything to win, other than cheat or act in a bush league manner (e.g. take walks in a slow pitch softball game or use Michael Vick while playing Madden 2005). I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror after a win or it just isn’t worth it.
How ’bout you?

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