Students packed the stands at the Rowan Rec Center’s pool this past Thursday to cheer on their friends at the Homecoming Battleship event. 

This was one of the many events Rowan held during their annual Homecoming week, which was kicked off on Oct. 13. Compared to other events, this competition tends to be a lot more competitive than the rest. 

Each team was provided with a canoe, a paddle, a shield, and two buckets, with the goal simple for all the competitors: to throw as much water into the other ships and live to see another round. 

Two team members out of the four-man team each canoe had were given roughly 10 minutes to scoop up and throw as much water as they possibly could into other canoes. While one team member steered the canoe in the back, another one tried desperately to block all the incoming water from entering. 

The battle started at 9 p.m., lasting all the way to 11:30 p.m., and in total saw 30 teams ranging from students to faculty compete to win the championship.

Out of those 30 teams, by far the most dominant and the team that won the event was the Sailing Sabres. 

Maddox Pace, a psychology major, felt confident in himself and his team after the first round had ended. 

“I thought we’d be out round one, but I was very confident that we might go somewhere with it if we did win the first round,” said Pace. “We wanted to go big, go bold, and win this thing.”

Each member of the Sabres had a designated job, too. 

“Victor’s the cannon, May shields us, Sarah steers us, and I’m a rock,” says Pace. 

Although being one of the more dominant teams in the tournament, things weren’t always smooth sailing for the Sabres, though, as they thought they were going to go down in the third round. 

“We had so much water in our vessel, and what ended up happening was another team got out just a few seconds before us,” said Pace.

Many rounds consisted of constant 10-minute chaos, with log-jams, canoes going down in the matter of seconds, or sometimes, even simultaneously. 

Some students decided to show up in a fashionable way, such as Marcelo’s Magicians, who all dressed up with long grey hair, a full grey beard, and a mustache, as well as a wizard’s hat.

By the second time they went up, though, some decided to ditch certain aspects of their costume as it was mostly soaked. 

Veronica Puco, an English education major, joined in on the idea and wanted to be out there from the rest of their competitors. 

“We wanted to do something out there, and we heard that some spirit points are on the line, so I wanted to make sure we showed up,” said Puco. 

They weren’t the only ones to dress up, though, as Rowan’s photography club, with their ship named “Photo Dump,” all wore suit jackets to the competition.

And just like many other teams, Anurag Thudi, a computer science major, and his team did not have a single strategy except for essentially two when they were battling in the waters. 

The team competed twice, with the first go-around not going so well, but got a chance for redemption in the consolation round. 

“The first time, we actually sank in 20 seconds, because we did not know how to distribute the weight, but the next time we came around, we won,” said Thudi. 

Often, they found themselves sandwiched between the chaos from all the other canoes around them, and they used their one other strategy. 

“Just keep rolling,” said Thudi.