Shakespeare had once said, “If he fall in, good night, or sink or swim!” Oddly enough, Wednesday night’s Homecoming battleship competition could not have been described much better.

On Oct. 17, 144 Rowan University students from different clubs, fraternities and sports teams, took to the Rec Center pool in the fourth annual water joust. The goal, sink the other teams’ ships and avoid your ship from being sunk at the same time.

Students were in teams of four, using any and every strategy they could think of to sink opposing teams’ ships. Each canoe was given a paddle, two water buckets to attack and a shield to defend their ships from incoming water. As the night went on, after watching six heats of six teams each, the most eye-catching and entertaining strategy came in the championship round, from the champions themselves: The Outdoors Club.

Their strategy: ramming into other boats.

“I think we have a patented strategy,” said junior civil environmental engineering major Jeff Dobkowski. “It’s called the T-bone. If you go straight head-on into a boat, then the person in front with the bucket can get all the water in, and it can cause a lot of damage to a boat.”

An odd strategy came from a very unorthodox team, as the other members of the Outdoors Club, senior early childhood education major Nick Gorab, junior psychology major Matt Hollowniczky and senior civil and environmental major Danny Farrell did not know they were on the battleship team until short notice.

“I found out I was on the team at 7:00 p.m.,” Gorab said.

“I did not find out until two days ago,” Farrell said. “They asked me to do battleship and I was like ‘why not’. But I’m glad I did.”

The atmosphere in the building was electric. Teams going down, teams emerging victorious out of their heat and the Outdoors Club emerging victorious overall, caused the crowd to erupt, emphatically representing what homecoming week is about: school spirit.

“The atmosphere is what gets students coming out,” said senior health promotion wellness management major Diana Cordisco, an employee of the Rec Center. “It’s up to the students to help push [school spirit] and keep it going”.

“There’s just a lot of events all the time and always something to do, which is what makes this week so fun,” Andrew Lipski, an employee of the rec center, said.

Homecoming week continued with the Lip Sync battle on Thursday, the Block Party on Friday and the annual homecoming football game against Wesley on Saturday.

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