Field Advantage - Why Catching is the Most Important Thing

Alright, this'll be a little tough to explain. It should be easy to understand for anyone who plays games like chess or checkers or trading card games like magic the gathering or yu-gi-oh.

Now, this is basically a rule of thumb, but, the team with more players and more balls on their side of the field is more likely to win. I think just about everyone can agree with that.

Lets take a look at some numbers.

Lets say each person has a value of 2. and a ball has a value of 1. The balls are important, but having players on the field is even more important. They have the real potential to get people out.

Right now, blue team has a "score" of 10. 8 for the players and 2 for the dodgeballs.

Green has a score of 9. They have a lot of balls, as they should. Even though the numbers are so close, they are clearly losing, since they only have 2 players to their opponents 4. They don't want to give their opponents free range with throws.

But now, BLUE makes a throw and Green catches it!

All of a sudden, the score is Blue - 7 and Green - 11! They got a player, and a ball. and the opposing team lost a ball.That's a +5 advantage off one catch!

In an earlier post, I mentioned the importance of momentum. Since Green team has almost all the balls, they should easily throw one or maybe even two players out at this point, which would more or less result in winning the game

I'll post some videos explaining field advantage some more later. Comment below what you think!

Momentum is EVERYTHING

A game of dodgeball isn't like building a house of cards. You don't do it one piece at a time. In a typical game, the course of a game is usually decided within a few seconds.

Similar to a sword fight, or a game of chess, the field gets built up to a tense situation.  but the big play of the game will usually happen with multiple players getting out within a matter of seconds. This play is 95% of the time, game deciding.

Usually it begins with a catch. After the initial catch, a player on the same team makes a throw and gets another player out. All of a sudden, the court changed by a factor of 3. (One player in on the catching team, and two players out on the other team.) In my experience, I've been involved win momentous plays garnering field advantage of as much as 7 (maybe more. more on this later.)

When looking back on a dodgeball game, you can usually see the exact moment where the game is won. It is usually within a ten second window where one team capitalizes off their plays.

The prime example of this can be seen in this video at 2:04.  We are down 6-2 at 2:04.

My team is almost out of the game, and within 20 seconds we turned the whole game around and won.

It's all about capitalizing off of one play. Any moment can be the turning point in a game of dodgeball. The important thing to remember is that a team almost always becomes weaker the second one of their players gets out. If you get a player out the split second after another player gets out, you expand the teams weakness. Literally cutting the wound wider and wider until you bleed the other team dry. It's good stuff.

I've also been on the other side of this phenomenon as well. There's nothing worse than your opponents riding the momentum of a game right into your face. Like when a player on one side of you gets nailed with a ball, you turn to look at them and then you get hit and then a player throws one and it gets caught and then they throw another ball and get another player out. At this point, its basically gg.

The point behind this post is this: If any player on your team makes a big play, NOW is the time to go balls to the wall, it's time to shift gears and play really aggressively. You will completely dismantle the opponents defense and get the win.