Ben Stiller film and sport team dreaming of a win
A GROUP of men from the Burton area have formed a sport team in a move that has echoes with the plot of a Hollywood film.
The Burton Panthers play dodgeball, in which players on two teams try to throw balls and hit opponents, while avoiding being hit themselves.
The Panthers’ story has similarities with the 2004 film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, starring Ben Stiller, about a man who sets out to save his at-risk gym by participating in a dodgeball championship. While the film is a com
edy, the Panthers take the sport very seriously. They decided to set up a team because, as a group of hockey players, they wanted to try something new. All of them are aged over 35 and fathers.
One of the founding members was Ed Clamp, an IT project manager from Anslow, who was the captain of the vets team of Burton Hockey Club. The 41-year-old said: “We were just in the pub one day. We’re all pretty active and we played for the Burton hockey club for a long time. We wanted to try something new and someone in our group, I can’t remember who, had heard about the national [dodgeball] tournaments going on up at St George’s Park.
“We did a bit of research and found that all the British dodgeball is done up at St George’s so we thought it sounded fun as it’s pretty local to where we are all based. So we emailed them and asked if we could join one of the leagues. They got back to us and it just so happened that the team from the Navy had to pull out in the third league, so there was a space available. This was about four weeks before the first round of matches, so we paid our subs and we were in. The name Burton Panthers came about when we put it to the group. It was either that or the Burton Brewdogs, which was a nod to the town’s brewing history. But Panthers sounds cooler so I think that’s why that won.
“Everyone was on board pretty quickly, it was quite jokey at first.”
The team were given a training session by a former coach and British Dodgeball employee, with Ed drawing a comparison with the Ben Stiller film.
Ed added: “We managed to find a man named Gareth Lewis, who used to play for the Burton team, the Burton Bears, to come coach us. It really is like the film, we joked about how it was very similar. We even started calling Gareth ‘Patches,’ after the coach from the film. Life imitates art, I guess.
“We played our first match in October, which ended in a 17-9 loss to the Norwich Nighthawks. They book out the ground for the weekend and play a whole load of matches on one day. It is really big at universities, so there were a lot of students there.
“It’s not a complicated sport but there is a lot you need to know. You really have to be concentrating the entire time you are on the court. It is a really fast-paced game, each game lasts 30 minutes, 15 minutes each way. It is mentally and physically tiring,.
“There are so many people from across the country and we’re definitely the underdogs. It feels really exciting. I played hockey for many years, so I’ll always have this competitive edge. I really hope it explodes in popularity.”
Now Ed has said the team’s main goal is to win a game.
He said: “I think because of how much we all enjoy it, we would like to keep it going. We would be interested in putting together a second team and a ladies’ team. It is certainly not a one-season thing.
“We want to go play in competitions, and it would be great to carry on. We just want to win one match. We’re slightly in a daze that we are even doing it.”