The Southern Ohio Copperheads held their second annual Wifflemania Tournament at Pruitt Field, pitting 11 teams together to throw their gnarliest pitches and make each other look silly. Teams played two preliminary games to determine seeding, before being slotted into the tournament’s win-or-go-home bracket.
After the preliminary rounds, it was clear that two teams from the Sports Ad program posed the most serious threat to the title: the reigning champions, led by second-year student Mike Dirmann and his frequent “I’ve thrown the only no-hitter in the history of this tournament!” boasts, and the upstart challengers primarily from the first year class, led by MSA Exclusive David Neumann, who looked like a wiffleball prodigy with his prowess on the mound.
The two teams ended up on opposite sides of the bracket, and made quick work of their opponents before facing off in the championship match. Five hotly contested innings saw the reigning champs dethroned at the hands of the crafty Neumann.
“Neumann was throwing cartoon pitches out there,” said Ethan Saporito, the Assistant GM of the Copperheads. Saporito’s team fell to Neumann’s in the semifinal round. “When you ‘re feeling good about yourself for hitting a foul ball, you know you’re in trouble. They deserved the title.”
The event, which won the award for Best Non-Traditional Revenue Generating Event at the Sports Business Conference in 2012, helped the Copperheads to connect with the student body during the school year.
“We’re working toward transitioning from being only a source of summer entertainment to becoming a 12 month entertainment organization that’s centered around the team,” said Saporito. “Wifflemania is great for us in that it allows us to connect with the students who may not have heard of us if they’ve previously left Athens in the summer.”
After its second successful year, it appears that Wifflemania is poised to remain a permanent fixture in the Copperheads’ schedule, and will provide the team’s staff the opportunity to broaden their sport experience.
“The highlight for me was seeing everyone enjoy the event. At the end of the day, that’s why we all want to work in this industry; because it gives people a place to create memories,” said Saporito. “That being said, it was pretty satisfying to keep the trophy in the Sports Ad family!”
