Coming off a chunk of their schedule that saw them play nine matches in 31 days, it was hardly surprising to show up at Seattle Sounders training camp on Thursday and find that they weren't doing soccer activities. I was shocked to see them playing dodgeball though.
I only got there in time to catch the final, but I was pretty impressed with what I saw. There were players donning war paint and all of them seemed to be taking it seriously enough to be arguing over infractions.
Team Black: Mike Seamon, Bryan Meredith, Alex Caskey, Tom Dutra (wearing his white uniform from his adult-league team), Michael Tetteh, Brad Evans and Chris Henderson.
Team Green: Andy Rose, Sammy Ochoa, Mauro Rosales, Roger Levesque, Alvaro Fernandez, Marc Burch and Leo Gonzalez.
I'm not entirely up on the rules, by Sigi Schmid said they were based on the movie "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story." Team Green ended up as champions.
"It was a lot of fun," David Estrada said. "I was kinda bummed not to have training to be honest. Dodgeball is a neat sport. I think you saw soccer players playing dodgeball and how they feel the ref is always against them. You saw guys pointing at the ref and arguing with the ref. It was pretty fun."