DODGE THIS

Duck! Dodgeball just joined the growing list of competitive sports at UC Davis. The Intramural and Sports Club program scheduled, for the first time, a 24-hour, double-elimination, “dodge ’til you drop” dodgeball tournament on Dec. 3. Student coordinator Dan Greenberg said he and his friends were inspired after watching a trailer for the Ben Stiller movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Initial interest in the tournament was strong among students, even those who were the dodgeball target in grade school, Greenberg said. “It seems like everybody remembers getting hit.”

Dodgeball is enjoying a nationwide resurgence following the release of the comedy film last June. Greenberg said UC Davis is among at least 30 campuses to sponsor dodgeball tournaments this year.

Laura Hull, associate director of the intramural program, said the game is so popular that she tried three suppliers before finding one that had enough balls in stock.

The tournament followed rules of the new national dodgeball federation: Six players on each team try to eliminate the opposing players by hitting them with a ball. If the target catches the ball, the thrower goes out. The team to win the best two out of three games wins the match. Creative team names and uniforms were encouraged.

UC Davis student organizers came up with their own tiebreaker: The Duel. Each team picks one player. Starting out back to back, the duelers walk in opposite directions, turn on a blow of referee’s whistle and fire balls at each other.

Nowadays, at least, the balls are foam.

TRUE SURVIVOR

Chad Crittenden ’94 lasted 10 episodes on CBS’ Survivor: Vanuatu before being voted off the island by fellow competitors vying for the $1 million prize. When he left, he was the most popular contestant among viewers voting in the network’s online poll.

If you watch Crittenden’s audition tape on the show’s Web site, cbs.com/primetime/ survivor9, you can see how the 35-year-old Oakland schoolteacher got on the reality television show in the first place. He’s a real-life survivor with a whacky sense of humor.

On his video, he runs fast in place and talks about running triathlons after losing a leg to cancer. Then he proceeds to show just how strong a contestant he would be. He uses his prosthetic leg to reach a key to free himself from a makeshift cage (behind a porch trellis), dig in the dirt for food in the “wilderness” (a worm in a backyard garden) and “row” a canoe (a plastic kiddie pool). Throughout, he exclaims “Innovation!”

DAVIS WOKS

You can now eat your way around the Pacific Rim without ever leaving Davis. A map published by the Davis Downtown Business Association lists 23 Asian restaurants and one tapioca-tea shop in the 32-block area.

By cuisine, the restaurant breakdown includes nine Chinese, five Thai, four Japanese, two Vietnamese, two Indian and one Korean.

Among other categories, there are at least two downtown restaurants serving Italian pasta. That gives UC Davis students plenty of noodle options when they tire of packaged ramen.

SIGNS, SIGNS

Advertisements you’re likely to see only at UC Davis:

• Outside the Bike Barn, where there are lots of for-sale signs on used bikes, one quotes from the 1971 hit song “Signs”: “Long-haired freaky people need not apply.”
• Posters seeking volunteers for Project Compost, which turns campus food waste back into dirt: “Up with Compost, Down with Landfill” and “Rot is Hot.”
• A pitch for the fruit salad at the Coffee House: “Eat it or get scurvy.”

ONE, TWO, CHEW

Barry Rice, an invasive-species scientist with the Nature Conservancy’s office at UC Davis, grows Venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants as a hobby.

One reason he likes Venus flytraps is they don’t snap at the first thing that drops in. One poke could be just a raindrop. But a couple wriggles, like the motion an insect makes trying to escape, means lunch.

“This is a plant that can count,” says Rice. “Oak trees can’t count.”

GOOD MEDICINE

This year’s incoming class of 93 medical students includes a student who has worked as a clown, another who played for the U.S. national Ultimate Frisbee team and a freelance musician who has done studio work for Steven Spielberg, John Kerry and Chinese pop star Faye Wong.