The University of Indianapolis Public Relations Student Society of America held its first Halloween-themed dodge ball tournament on Oct. 28.
Senior communication major and PRSSA President Hayley Good said PRSSA is a student organization that helps students become more professional.
“We give them connections to the Public Relations Society of America, which is for the professionals in the PR world,” Good said. “We help with networking and finding jobs and going to conferences and different luncheons.”
Good said PRSSA also holds events called Lunch with a Pro, in which a professional comes and joins students for lunch and talks about what he or she does and how he or she got started in his or her current career. Good said these events, which are every few Wednesdays, are open to anyone.
Good said PRSSA organized some dodge ball tournaments a couple of years ago, but they were not Halloween-themed.
“We wanted to do something to get campus involvement,” Good said. “We wanted to get our name out on campus and just do something fun.”
Eight teams originally signed up for the event but only seven participated.
“We weren’t really sure how many teams would sign up, just because we didn’t know how people would react to it, since none of us were really that involved when they did the last dodge ball tournament,” Good said.
Each team had a different costume including, Huemanity, which wore all colors of the rainbow, Misfits, which had all sorts of costumes, the Minions, Superheroes, Rednecks/Hillbillies and Jersey Boys.
The winning team for best costume was the Jac Paq, which had pictures of Jackie Paquette all over each player. The winning team was determined through a Twitter contest during the event.
“I was really happy [with the outcome]. We had people come just to watch,” Good said. “Most of the teams that came, even if they got out, they ended up staying to watch and cheer on their friends.”
The tournament followed single elimination rule, which means a team is out after losing one game.
The winning team of the tournament was the Jersey Boys, who wore different football and soccer jerseys. The team consisted of students Jared Boomer, Keegan Remsburg, Joe Lenihan, Dylan Linton, Craig Banister and Jordan Beasley.
This was the first time those students had played as a team, and they were proud to win the tournament with three wins. Team members said they went into the tournament intending to win.
In the final game, the Jersey Boys played against the Superheroes, and Remsburg ended up with the winning hit.
“It [winning] was joyful. It was a great win for the team,” Remsburg said.
The Jersey Boys won gift cards to Buffalo Wild Wings and PRSSA T-shirts, courtesy of PRSSA.
“We will definitely do something [an event] next semester,” Good said. “We don’t know what it is yet, but we do plan on having another event.”
