Greenfield Students of Color Club hosts inaugural dodgeball tournament

GREENFIELD — Students of Color Club President Nate Woodard hopes a community dodgeball tournament at Greenfield High School will become an annual tradition.

On Friday evening, Woodard, a 19-year-old senior, could be found running around the gymnasium and adjacent hallway, checking the refreshments booth, making sure the microphones were working properly and checking on the athletes to ensure everything would operate smoothly for the club’s first dodgeball tournament.

“[The Students of Color Club has] been working very hard the past five or six months to make this dodgeball tournament happen,” Woodard said.

Four teams took part in the single-elimination tournament. Student team Hoffbauer’s Dawgs took on Dodge Hall, a team of teachers from Greenfield High School, in the first round. A raucous cheer erupted from the stands as the last member of the Dawgs was eliminated, and the Greenfield teachers went on to the championship round.

The second round matchup pitted the Admin All-Stars, a group of administrators in Greenfield, against the Average Jakes, a team of firefighters from the Greenfield Fire Department. A closer matchup than the first game, the All-Stars scraped past the Jakes and found themselves competing against the teachers for the championship.

The championship round was the closest, as the Admin All-Stars and Dodge Hall played the most competitive and longest game of the tournament. At the five-minute mark, all eliminated players were allowed back into the game, and for another three minutes, dodgeballs were flying back and forth with no end in sight.

Eventually, Dodge Hall was down to its last player, while the All-Stars had three people left. The All-Stars ultimately claimed victory and Woodard bestowed medals to the winners.

Kanza Nasrullah, an 18-year-old senior and vice president of the Students of Color Club, said she appreciated the energy the event brought, not just to student activism, but activism as a whole. Nasrullah said activism doesn’t need to be serious all the time, and that holding fun events can get people involved and start a dialogue.

While the dodgeball tournament was designed to be a fun way to bring the community together and raise awareness about what the Students of Color Club “really means and what it’s like to be a student of color,” according to Nasrullah, it was also a fundraising opportunity for the club. Woodard said the fundraiser will help the club to plan trips and create merchandise, and the seniors want to leave the Students of Color Club in a good place financially when the school year comes to a close.

As seniors, both Woodard and Nasrullah view this club as something they want to build and pass on to the next generation. Woodard added that it wasn’t just him and Nasrullah that took the lead on the dodgeball tournament; everyone in the 15-member club played a part.

Still, Nasrullah said Woodard is the heart and soul of the operation.

“This club … what we leave behind is very important, but I feel like it means a lot more to [Woodard],” Nasrullah said. “He definitely has put in so much more work than … me or anyone else in the club — so, so much more.”

While the event was a fun night centered around togetherness, the undercurrent of why the event was taking place was not lost on Woodard. In a city that, according to 2020 census data, is 88.2% white, Woodard said he wants to ensure that minority groups in Greenfield have a voice.

“We want the outcome to show that our students that are the minority in our school, and the minority in our country and the minority in our city, that they have a voice,” Woodard said. “It means a lot for us to do this and to represent students of color.”

“With the way the world is going,” Nasrullah said, “I think it needs a lot more of this.”