Following Orange Madness on Friday, the Carrier Dome was set up for a day of football that didn’t include any Division I athletes.

On Sunday, Otto’s Army held its fourth annual flag football tournament for students in the Carrier Dome. The event, in which participating players donate $5 to play, raises money for the Jim and Juli Boeheim Foundation, an organization that supports cancer research in central New York.

The official count of teams that played in this year’s tournament was 17, and each team had between six and eight players. Teams played games in 20-minute intervals throughout the day until the final game. New to this year’s tournament, a prize was given to the team that won the tournament, said Otto’s Army Vice President Natalie Wiesnet, a senior television, radio and film major.

Participants in this year’s tournament raised a little more than $600.

Much of the attraction to the tournament every year draws from the opportunity that students have to play football in the Carrier Dome, said Sean Fernandez, president of Otto’s Army and a senior finance major. The setup of the event, which consisted of several teams playing simultaneously on the divided Carrier Dome turf, was the same this year as it had been in previous years. This format has proven successful in the past and the amount of teams participating this year was also about the same as last year, Fernandez said.

Overall, Sunday’s event was very successful and went smoothly, he said.

This is the fourth annual flag football tournament that Otto’s Army has hosted in the Carrier Dome. Most of the planning was the same as in past years, so the organization of the event mainly consisted of setting a date with the Carrier Dome staff and reserving the equipment from recreation services. Otto’s Army also had to make sure that SU Ambulance would be available to attend the event in case of injury, Fernandez said.

The event gave students a chance to stay active in a different way, especially if they haven’t had the opportunity to participate in other athletic activities at SU, said David Parran, a freshman mechanical engineering major and a wide receiver on one of the teams that participated in the championship round and came in second place.

Fernandez said one of the main goals of Otto’s Army is to create Orange spirit at every sporting event at the university. Otto’s Army has worked on other projects this semester, such as the “Pack the Hill” campaign that encourages students to attend home soccer games. They also attended the SU football game at MetLife Stadium and organized Orange Madness, an event to generate excitement for the upcoming basketball season, he said.

In the upcoming months, Otto’s Army plans to create hype for the basketball season and one of the biggest events that they have planned for the spring semester is to camp-out in February for the 11 days prior to the men’s basketball game against Duke, Wiesnet said.

The tournament itself was a positive experience, and those students that played in the tournament were less concerned with whether they win or lose, as long as they were supporting a good cause, said Alec Zoida, a sophomore secondary education and history major and member of the team that came in second place.

Said Zoida: “We battle on the field in hopes that one day no one in central New York will have to battle cancer.”

Published on October 20, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Erin: eemcdona@syr.edu