On Friday, December 7, the University of Utah hosted the second Canoe Battleship Tournament on campus.
Matt McCarthy, the director of intramural sport and sport clubs at the university, planed this event during finals week with the goal of it being an active and enjoyable study break for students. While he is hoping to emulate it each semester, McCarthy typically holds it on the Friday before finals week.
“It’s our thinking that it’s a good escape and just a couple hours off. Students are using the full day to study, having the afternoon and evening just to play and it hopefully helps their studying when they go back to it,” said McCarthy. “Obviously, it’s up to the student whether they want to take that break. But I think it’s a good escape right before finals week.”
The game can last four hours, depending on how many students register for the event. Last spring, McCarthy said 35 students registered and the tournament took 2.5 hours.
While that seems like a long time for anyone to be exercising – regardless of their youth – he explained that each heat never lasts longer than 20 minutes, with breaks in-betweeen.
The point of the match is to sink another team’s boat. Each canoe, or ‘boat’ is given 3 or 4 buckets, depending on how many people are in the canoe, and one yoga mat, which acts as a shield. Team members of one canoe then fill their buckets and pour it into another canoe until it sinks. Once a canoe sinks or once a team has accidentally knocked over their own canoe, they’re out.
But because McCarthy wants to give people a fair game for the $6 they pay to play, they will typically have a champion, then a second qualifying, so each team has a chance to play at least twice.
McCarthy used various channels to market the event including, advertising the event on IMLeagues since the beginning of July, ads on monitors in the campus recreation center, including information on newsletters and scheduling it on intramural schedule cards. The event has even made it onto 5 Things You Need to do While at the University of Utah, by Go Beyond the Brochure.
But there is no plan to make it an intramural sport that is practiced throughout the semester. “I think it would be hard to run like that just because the heats are so quick,” said McCarthy.
And while McCarthy finds it as a fun, stress-free event during a stressful time of the year, he can’t confirm if it would work at other universities. “I think our participants that do participate enjoy it. I don’t know if it being the Friday before finals week make them enjoy it any more or any less. And I don’t know if it deters some people being when it is. So I think it would have to be based on a university’s culture and what they think works best for their situation,” he said.
McCarthy explained he has seen success at it on other universities where it has lasted the entire four hours with many students registered.
