UConn Traditions


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Volume 5, Number 1 - Spring 2004

A Page from the Past

21 years of mud, ooze and fun

Annual mud volleyball tournament a certified UConn tradition

On April 26, 1984, an ad in the Connecticut Daily Campus proclaimed: "The Rainy [sic] Storrs weather can't stop it! The most outrageous campus game is finally here!"

Oozeball - 1987
Photo: University Archives
Oozeball tournament May 2, 1987.

Indeed it was. And it has remained. The annual Spring Weekend Oozeball Tournament, an activity of the UConn Student Alumni Association, turns 21 this spring. It's where everybody gets hosed - and everybody has fun. For UConn alumni and students, Oozeball is an afternoon of "600 gallons of water and 60 tons of dirt."

Oozeball - volleyball played in an 8-inch bed of mud - is a certified UConn tradition, and last year, Sports Illustrated cited UConn's annual tournament as the "Best Mud Volleyball" event in the country.

When the first tournament was held, Ronald Reagan was in the White House - and heading toward a second term. Trivial Pursuit was the hot game, and punk rock was at its zenith. The inaugural Oozeball event was described in the Daily Campus by associate sports editor Kim Harmon '84 (CLAS) as "a game where people are going to have fun ruining their clothes and getting mud in their ears...May God help the campus washing machines."

"Flopping around in mud has got to be hilarious, especially when someone you know gets a glop in the face," wrote Harmon.

A team calling itself The Pounders, students from McMahon Hall and Carriage House Apartments, won that first tournament some 20 years ago.

The second tournament featured a surprise entrant - the costumed Jonathan mascot arrived at the start of the event. Responding to student's cheers, the wearer of the costume lifted off the Jonathan head to reveal that he was John DiBiaggio, UConn's then president. Under the costume, DiBiaggio was wearing sweats, and, to more student cheers, he joined them in the slop and slime for a round of Oozeball.

For many years the event was held on what was known as the Grad Field - that section of the former Gardner Dow Field bounded by the Graduate Residence Halls, Babbidge Library and Hillside Road. Today that site is home to the new School of Business and the Information Technologies Building. Today's tournaments are played on the field between Beach Hall and the CLAS Building (formerly the Waring Chemistry Building).

-- Mark J. Roy '74 (CLAS)



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