Sunday, December 21, 2014

WAKA Hampton Roads 2014 in Review

2014 was quite the year of WAKA kickball here in Hampton Roads. Four leagues, a charity tournament, a regional tournament, hundreds of kickball games, several epic parties, and thousands of Facebook posts. Without a doubt, this year will go down as one of the most memorable ones. As we flip the calendar forward to 2015, let's take some time to reflect on many of the best moments of the past 12 months.

January 25th
The 3rd annual WAKA VA Raptor season kicked off on a chilly Saturday afternoon!


February 1st
The infamous “Snow Week” of VA Raptor. A sunny 55 degree day is the perfect weather for winter kickball. Only problem is the 6 inches of snow covering the ground. Solution? Dig out the base paths and kick away!


February 8th
Following the VA Raptor games, we held the first ever WAKA Bar Olympic games at the Checkered Flag. The Denim Devils cleaned up, including taking the gold in Flip Cup.

February 10th
The WAKA VA Peninsula hot stove started heating up as many players began declaring their ‘free agency’. This post from February highlighted “10 Free Agents You Want On Your Kickball Team”.


February 20th
The WAKA world was introduced to Fagel Baer (and friends) on a very intimate episode of 3 Up 3 Down.


March 1st
The ladies of the VA Hustle held a 'date auction' to raise funds for their travel events and the WAKA Kicks Cancer Relay for Life team. All together, the team contributed $800 to the charity after the event!  


March 15th
The Situation repeated as WAKA VA Raptor winter champions, earning a hard fought 1-0 victory over Beast Mode in the finals. For Sitch catcher, Matt Coup, it was his 3rd time winning the Raptor Cup.


April 4th
Historically, another kickball company had dominated the scene on Friday nights in Yorktown. But after years of mismanagement and poor customer service, many players looked towards WAKA and Keith Morehart to step in and give them an alternative. That is how VA Freedom was born. After a lot of effort and hard work, the inaugural season kicked off on Friday, April 4th!


April 6th
The aforementioned Fagel stepped up and became the 3rd author of the VA Peninsula Bar Buzz column. To mark the occasion, we debuted a new and improved custom title.

April 8th
On the day before the VA Peninsula Spring 2014 season kicked off, Ballsagna’s Karen Savell blessed us with “An Ode to Kickball”.

April 9th
The Spring 2014 VA Peninsula opening night featured one of the biggest upsets of 2014, PBJT defeating Kick Ass.

 
April 10th
VA Freedom brought on a veteran author to kick off their first Bar Buzz rankings, Marilee Columbus, aka "The Half Gallon Princess" helped ranked the Friday night squads at Bay Haven. 


April 15th
DCOMB may have won the Bar Buzz, but the highlight of this week’s post was definitely the full moon.

April 19th
After some afternoon day drinking, the 3 Up 3 Down crew opened up the phone lines and recorded an impromptu live podcast.



April 20th
Plan B vs. JFK was one of the marquee matchups of the spring. The game was recorded and posted with and without commentary on the GMOT.


April 27th
The Bar Buzz highlighted some of the love around the league.




April 29th
The Foul Balls' Jesse Rogers paid tribute to WAKA Wednesday with an tastefully done slide show set to Eric Carmen's smash hit, "Hungry Eyes". Can't believe this didn't go viral.


May 3rd
The fundraising campaign for the American Cancer Society concluded with the annual Relay For Life event at Todd Stadium. WAKA Kicks Cancer contributed over $5,900 dollars to help fight cancer!




May 9th
Who's Driving Home welcomed their teammate, Mike Harvey back from deployment on a special Freedom Friday. 



May 14th
The now infamous tee shirt swap. Things got weird at Luckie’s that night. 


May 23rd
Mike Kern took over the Goblet of Glory writing duties, making his debut post in May.





June 7th
Pop Pop closed out the inaugural VA Fredom season with a championship celebration!

June 14th 
Hampton Roads was chosen as the site of the first ever WAKA Mid-Atlantic Regional event. Kickball teams from Virginia, DC, Maryland, and North Carolina competed in the event and partied at the Luau party at Luckie's that weekend! In the end, OSC from Washington, DC earned the top prize of $2,250!



June 18th
The Spring VA Peninsula theme week featured a bunch of creative designs, but none more so than the WAKA Shame, Walk of Shame. 


June 21st
Plan B won the Spring 2014 VA Peninsula tournament in dominating fashion. Many of the games were recorded so that there will always be a record of their historic reign atop the league.




June 25th
The 3rd Annual WAKA VA Patriot Draft was held at The Cactus. This was the biggest draft season yet, with 13 teams and 226 players participating. Gene Efird was the number 1 overall pick by the Sex Cannons.

July 9th
It was WAKA Night at the Peninsula Pilots game. All WAKA Players wearing their league shirts got free entry to the game, and afterwards challenged some of the ballplayers to a scrimmage! 


July 14th
As part of a fundraiser for Rob Allen and his fight against testicular cancer, we sold official WAKA trading cards during the summer. Over $400 was raised by collectible enthusiasts.

July 19th
The WAKA Hampton Roads team welcomed Fagel Baer officially to the team as the Social Coordinator!

July 26th
VA Peninsula survey results were released. 88% of all respondents graded their satisfaction at an ‘8’ or higher. As Commissioner, I shared a deeper look at some of the great feedback.

July 26th
With a couple of longtime teams either disbanding or failing to meet the Fall deadline, free agents flooded the Facebook group looking for new homes to play with.


July 30th
An on field proposal from Brian Neal to Jen Miller had all of WAKA going ‘aaaaaaaww’.

 
August 2nd
People had some photoshop fun (a little at my expense).

August 2nd
For the first time ever, stats were kept for one of our kickball leagues. Thanks to the effort of several volunteers, VA Freedom numbers were recorded and league leaders were highlighted on our blog each week.


August 9th
Their were a lot of hairy upper lips at Manhattan's for the VA Patriot End of Season Party.


August 20th
After the initial games were washed out on August 6th, the VA Patriot Bowl games were rescheduled. E2  earned the Cactus Bowl win and title of VA Patriot champions. “Winning a championship with Blake and Bez as teammates,” Bryan Moore commented later, “Never before. Never again.”


August 22nd
The 2nd season of WAKA VA Freedom kicked off in Yorktown. Taking over the Friday night Goblet of Glory duties was the originator of the concept, Trici Fredrick!

August 28th
VA Peninsula is unique in that players travel from all over the region to play every Wednesday. Out of curiousity, we took a look at the demographics for the league on the GMOT.



September 10th
Rumspringa celebrated a major milestone. 100 regular season WAKA games in VA Peninsula!
 

September 19th
Behind every good man, is a great woman. The VA Freedom crew celebrated the birthday of the league's First Lady, Tiffany Morehart at Bayhaven following the games.

October 9th
Just like the NFL, WAKA Kickballers rocked pink accessories all month long for Breast Cancer Awareness.

October 11th
The Situation would represent WAKA Hampton Roads in the WAKA Founders Cup World Championship of Kickball in Las Vegas. Although they would fall short of their goal of a championship, they competed hard. Hampton Roads would not be totally left out of the championship though as Dom Smith and Amanda Doolittle were members of the victorious Shockwave.



October 25th
The 2nd Annual WAKA Kicks Cancer Tournament was a success. 200 kickballers had a great time and raised over $3k for the American Cancer Society! In the end, Cancer Attack ended up raising the trophy.


October 29th
The Halloween Theme Week was highlighted by the Heads' Street Fighter II cosplay. The group actually earned some recognition on the national WAKA blog. 


November 1st
In a wild rematch of the spring finals, Pop Pop continued their reign atop the Friday night mountain with another VA Freedom championship over Cardiac Arrest.

November 11th
We paid tribute to the many veterans in WAKA VA Peninsula.
November 14th 
Party Animal. Best Dressed. Best Ref. Cutest Couple. These were just some of the superlatives voted on by the VA Peninsula league.


November 15th
The Wentworth Trophy® Finals came down to the wire as Sneak Attack's McCoy Wood threw the Heads' tying run (me) out at the plate to end the game and earn them the championship!

November 22nd
WAKA Hampton Roads was a proud sponsor of Jungle Gym's "Burpee Fest". Dozens of athletes competed in work out competitions to raise money for a variety of charities including $1,200 for WAKA Kicks Cancer! 


December 8th
The "Kickball Cartoon" fundraiser went underway. For every $20 donation to the WAKA Kicks Cancer team, I created a custom piece of art (ok, might be overstating a bit) for the patron. To date, we've raised over $500 for the American Cancer Society thanks to the art project.

December 11th
In what has now become an annual tradition, WAKA held the 3rd Ugly Sweater party at Finn McCools! Ugly Sweaters. Beautiful People.

Phew! There you have it... What an incredible year. Although this was a lengthy post, I'm sure I left out plenty of cool stuff we did too. What was your favorite memory from 2014? What do you think we can do to top this EPIC year in 2015? I can't wait to see!
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