The smell of chlorine fills the air as I walk into the Corbett pool. I am here to cover one of the most unusual sports: battleships. Usually when you think of Battleship you think of a board game, where you are trying to sink your opponent’s ships. That is essentially what they are trying to do at Corbett gym.
“Each round we have four different teams, they start out in the corners of the pool and it takes about 15 minutes for each round. What they are doing is essentially tossing buckets of water into each other’s canoes until two of the teams sink. The top two will move on in the tournament,” Julia Dohan an intramural representative working at the event said.
When I first walked in and began watching, my first thought was how chaotic the event was. The teams had buckets and little wave boards, and were just going nuts. People were throwing water everywhere, while at the same time trying to keep their balance in the canoes. Could a sport like this be very popular?
“It is very popular. Right now we have about 31 teams, so a lot of people participate,” James Sawyer, a representative at the intramural sports office at UW said.
There were a lot of people packed in the pool area while I was there. I could definitely see the appeal of wanting to be a pirate and sink your enemy’s ship.
“It was really fun and it was a lot harder than it looks. We made it to the second round. We saw the other people play and thought ‘yeah we could do that.’ Once you get out there it is tough though,” Mike Turpavich of team Wilson said.
Even teams that lost looked like they were having a blast. Players would strike funny poses as their canoe would sink to the bottom the pool, as if they were a captain going down with their ship. They would jump out of the pool and laugh with their other teammates about how silly they looked in the pool.
I walked away thinking about signing up the next time this event rolls around. Some of my idiot friends and I would have a blast screaming at each other as we threw buckets of water at other teams.
I enjoyed watching the event and hope to be able to compete in it next year.
