Co-ed dodgeball player Jim Dimock tries to avoid one fired ball as he readies to peg one himself during a Thursday night league game at the Mankato YMCA.

By Brian Ojanpa
MANKATO —

Sweat-drenched Dan Cronn-Mills had his back against the wall — literally.
The fortyish university faculty member was frantically hopping side-to-side, trying to avoid the fastballs smacking into the gym wall with loud thwacks.
As the last player standing on his co-ed dodgeball team, Cronn-Mills was doing a good impersonation of a mechanical duck in a carnival shooting gallery.
When a toss finally tagged him, he walked off the court and talked about why he and fellow Minnesota State speech communication department members opted for a playground game from their youth:
“It sounded like a good way to get our butts off the couch. We’re a bunch of old, slow-moving academics.”
Indeed, the resurgent sport of dodgeball is tailor-made for all ilk of athleticism.
“You don’t need to have a lot of coordination and skill, but you get a great workout,” Mankato YMCA fitness director Micki Schaffer says. “And the time just flies by.”
This is the second year for the Mankato Y’s co-ed dodgeball league, where eight teams wage 40-minute games on Thursday nights from late February to late March.
This is the same dodgeball adults recall from their childhoods, with a notable exception. Gone are the hard rubber balls playground toughs peppered classmates with.
In their place are wimpier but safer foam models weighing a couple of ounces and about the size of a cantaloupe.
But even those, when fired hard, can get a player’s attention.
“I got one in the nose once,” player Jim Dimock says. “It’ll make you blink for a second, but you’ve got to try awfully hard to hurt somebody with these.”
The popularity of adult dodgeball nationwide can be traced in part to the 2004 comedy film “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” in which drunk, wheelchair-bound coach Patches O’Houlihan exhorts his motley squad to heed the five Ds: dodge, duck, dip, dive and, uh, dodge.
Actually, the sport was in comeback mode before the movie, with the formation in 2000 of the National Amateur Dodegball Association, followed by the emergence of the National Dodgeball League.
Paradoxically, the game’s renewed popularity has coincided with its decline as a staple of elementary school gym classes. Physical education instructors shun dodgeball because it’s an elimination game, rendering kids inert instead of participating.
There’s also the “violence” issue. Kids still can get pummeled, though the light weight of the balls take away any sting.
“You throw your arm out just trying to get some speed behind it,” says Chad (no last name given), who plays for the Y league’s Spitting Llamas team.
The 37-year-old says dodgeball’s attraction is fourfold:
“You don’t have to be in great shape, you don’t have to run bases, you can do it just for fun, and you can go to the bar afterward,” he says. “It’s a win-win situation for us.”

On Friday, March 3rd, the Minnesota State University, Mankato forensics team traveled to Concordia College in Moorhead, MN to attend the 3rd Valley Forensics League tournament of the 2005-2006 season. The team performed well, placing high in many events. The results are Grant Anderson placed 5th in Dramatic Interpretation Joshua Randall placed 6th in Persuasion Karie Menser placed 5th in POI Matthew Collie placed 2nd in Persuasion, qualifying it for the AFA-NIET Matthew Collie and Karie Menser placed 1st in Duo Interpretation, getting straight 1st place ranks throughout the entire tournament. The win qualified Collie and Menser's Duo for the AFA-NIET.

Dr. Nan Johnson-Curiskis has an article accepted for publication in the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. Her article titled “Online Course Planning” will appear in the March 2006 issue.

Alum Accepts Offer from Bowling Green State University
Stephen Croucher (MA, 2003) has an accepted of an offer from Bowling Green State University to serve as an assistant professor in the Communication Studies program. Stephen is currently completing his Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma.

Mavericks Win TCFL #6
On February 28th, 2006, the Mavericks Forensics team traveled to lovely Bloomington, Minnesota to attend the 6th Twin Cities Forensics League Tournament of the season.  The Mavericks earned top honors, taking first in the tournament, and scoring well in multiple events.  Senior Kim Cossairt placed 3rd in Poetry Interpretation.  Junior Josh Randall was the tournament champion in Persuasive Speaking.  Junior Emily Kofoed was the tournament champion in both Communication Analysis and Dramatic Interpretation, qualifying Dramatic Interpretation for the American Forensics Association National Tournament.  Freshman Grant Anderson placed 2nd in Poetry Interpretation, qualifying the event for the American Forensics Association National Tournament.  Cossairt and Anderson also placed 3rd in Dramatic Duo, qualifying the event for the National Forensics Association National Tournament. 

SCHOOL SPIRIT: (from left) Evelyn Kuball, Jamie Boelter, Melody DeLeon, Kim Marty, Nate Borgen and Jessi Miller pose next to former MSU athlete Jamel Staten’s Pepsi machine faceplate in the Taylor Center. As part of a class project, the group also helped change another Pepsi faceplate to Amanda Frame, an award-winning pole vaulter. In addition, three other faceplates were changed to display MSU’s logo.

Next time you spent $1.25 on a soda, take a moment to check out one of the five new faceplate Pepsi machines around campus.

Six MSU students were required to do a project focusing on corporatization of the MSU campus. What these students did was not only identify Pepsi as a controlling corporation, but they also approached Pepsi to help change and promote its image into an MSU image.

In the end, the machine fronts cost $250 each, amounting to more than $1,200. Although, according to group member Evie Kuball, the cost should have been much higher, but Tom Jean of Pepsi put a limit on the price.

The group, including Kuball, Kimberly Marty, Nate Borgen, Melody DeLeon, Jessi Miller and Jamie Boelter, dedicated the majority of its fall semester creating this project and seeing it through.

Jim Dimock, the group’s professor of Small Group Communications in the English/Speech for Secondary Education, assigned the project as a graduation requirement. Dimock said the group set out to “promote MSU as a campus from day one.” He also pointed out that the project showed the students that with enough persistence and hard work, “they can actually impact the campus; they can see the impact. It’s their campus, not Pepsi’s, not MSU’s, but the students’ campus.”

Of the 79 Pepsi machines on campus, the group was able to replace just five machine fronts. Three machines feature a banner-style MSU logo with the MSU torch. Every detail down to matching the exact colors of purple and gold, according to Ann Rosenquist-Fee, the director of publications for MSU, had to be in compliance with University regulations. These machines can be found on the first floor of the CSU, the cross-roads on the second floor between Armstrong and Morris and the vending machine bay in the basement of Wissink Hall near the ACC.

The other two machine fronts feature two outstanding former MSU athletes. One requirement for the athletic machines was that the athletes could not be current Mavericks. One highlights Amanda Frame, a former MSU pole-vaulter, and is located across from Myers Field House. The second athletic machine faceplate features former MSU basketball player Jamel Staten and is located at the entrance of the Bresnan Arena just outside of the Admissions Office.

During her career at MSU, Frame placed first in the NCC in 2001 and received All-America honors in pole-vaulting in 2002. She also holds the MSU pole vault record and set a NCAA Division II record in 2004. Again in 2004, Frame became the first MSU national champion in the pole vault.

After seeing the pop machine for the first time, Frame said she was “a little embarrassed.” However, she said that the project is “really good and that they are promoting the athletic department and publicizing the track team.” This project will also help get students excited about their sport and maybe even “light a little fire in athletes,” Frame said.

With the prime location of her pop machine at a recent track meet hosted by MSU, Frame said athletes from other schools commented on the machine and made comments such as, “What do I have to do to get my picture on a pop machine?”

In the two years Staten attended MSU, he was named All-North Central Conference twice and was the third men’s basketball player to ever be named to the All-American Team. Staten was able to rack-up 1,259 career points in his two-year run at MSU. Staten was unavailable for comment.

Staten and Frame are the only two Mavericks to ever be featured in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd.” Also, both athletes were named MSU’s top male and female athletes of the 2004-2005 season. The machine fronts feature action shots of both athletes doing what they do best.

The greatness with the athletic machine fronts, according to Dimock, is that, “every athlete that leaves here is going to want themselves on a Pepsi machine.”

Mankato Forensics Has Solid Showing at the 5th Twin Cities Forensics League Tournament of the Season
On February 14, 2006 the Minnesota State University, Mankato forensics team traveled to Normandale Community College for the 5th Twin Cities Forensics League Tournament of the 2005-2006 Season.  MSU-Mankato placed 3rd in the tournament behind second place University of Wisconsin, Madison and tournament champion St. Cloud State University.  10 schools competed in the tournament.

• Individual competitors for MSU-Mankato won a number of awards.  Specifics are listed below:
  • David Brennan placed 1st in Prose Interpretation and 1st in Impromptu Speaking. 
  • Joshua Randall placed 3rd in Persuasive Speaking and 3rd in Impromptu Speaking.
  • Karie Menser placed 2nd in Poetry Interpretation.

The high placings at this tournament also allowed David Brennan, Joshua Randall, and Karie Menser to strengthen their push for national tournament time in April.  David Brennan qualified Impromptu Speaking for the American Forensics Association (AFA) national tournament and Prose Interpretation for the National Forensics Assocation (NFA) national tournament.  Joshua Randall qualified Impromptu Speaking for AFA and Persuasive Speaking for NFA.  Karie Menser qualified Poetry Interpretation for AFA.

• Stephen Croucher (MA, 2003) has been notified his paper "Organizational Identity, Culture and Student Motivation Among Intercollegiate Forensics Competitors" has been awarded the top student paper award in the Forensics Division at the Southern States Communication Association Conference. The paper also been nominated for top overall paper in the division and at the conference.
• Faculty and Graduate Students are Busy at CSCA

• Graduate Student Authors "Top Paper" for CSCA
  Merci Decker, Graduate Teaching Assistant in Speech Communication , has been notified her competitive paper, “All You Need is Love ... and a Notecard: A Study on the Environmental Factors that Create Romantic Relationships within a Forensics Team” has been selected as a top paper and will be presented on a top paper panel at the Central States Communication Association annual conference being held in Indianapolis.

• Speech Comm Dept Alum to Receive Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
  Congratulations to Blair Thompson (MA, 2003), Ph.D. candidate and GTA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Blair was selected as one of two recipients for a College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. Blair will be honored and receive the award at the annual Honors Convocation Ceremony in April of 2006.