UCI students come up just short in their latest effort to break a dodgeball world record
Almost 3,000 UC Irvine students descended on the Anteater Recreation Center sports field Tuesday to take part in a 7-year-old campus tradition of breaking a Guinness World Record.
This year’s attempt? The largest game of four-quadrant dodgeball.
“Our student services commission team had about 40 ideas,” Student Services Vice President Jackson Chirigotis said. “The final decision was four-quadrant dodgeball.” The event, planned by the Associated Students, was scheduled during the campus’ Welcome Week activities.
Students were divvied up into four teams based on the color of their shirts: blue, yellow, gray and white.
Foam balls were arranged into a plus sign on the field, a design that gave each team its own square on the grass that the players were to remain in during the entire game. Players hit by a ball thrown by another team were eliminated.
UCI Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Thomas Parham led the countdown.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven,” he exclaimed into the microphone, as the crowd of students began to roar.
“Six, five, four,” he continued.
Then the students joined in.
“Three! Two! One!” the masses yelled before charging to the line of balls and throwing them to knock out opponents. For about an hour, balls flew in all directions until the last few minutes, when 16 players from each team remained.
Later, only the gray and white teams still had players on the field. The match ended when the last white team member was eliminated. The gray team emerged victorious.
“It’s a mixture of being terrified and having fun,” Quinn Korematsu, a second-year student, said during the event. “Where else can you go to play a game [of dodgeball] with over a thousand people?”
Four opposing teams furiously throw toward each other during a four-quadrant dodgeball game at UC Irvine’s Anteater Recreation Center sports field on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. The university attempted to break a Guinness World Record for the largest game of four-quadrant dodgeball. The university was expecting about 3,000-4,000 students to participate.
For second-year student Lila Johnston, UCI’s tradition of attempting to break a world record at the beginning of the school year is one of her favorite welcoming events.
“It’s something fun to put on the résumé,” she joked.
But after all the numbers were in Wednesday morning, the students were “just shy” of the 3,000 players needed to break the record, according to the Associated Students.
UCI students have broken six world records. The first, achieved in 2010, was the largest game of two-team dodgeball. It had 1,745 students participate.
The school broke that same record in 2011 with 4,488 students and again in 2012 with 6,084.
In 2013, UCI achieved the largest water pistol fight, with 3,875 dueling students.
In 2014, the record for the world’s largest pillow fight was broken with 3,813 participants. Last year, the largest game of capture the flag was broken with 2,888 people.
Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
