Powder Puff finishes off Greek Week

Phi Mu won the Powder Puff Football competition between sororities, which concluded Greek Week on Sunday after being postponed due to Hurricane Sandy. The event, hosted by the JHU Panhellenic Association, was held on the Homewood Practice Field on Sunday afternoon. Pi Beta Phi won Greek Week, overall.

The tournament consisted of three consecutive games. The first was between Alpha Phi and Kappa Kappa Gamma followed by a game between Phi Mu and Pi Beta Phi. The winners of the preliminary rounds — Kappa Kappa Gamma and Phi Mu — then faced off in a final round, with Phi Mu emerging victorious.

“No one scored a single touchdown against us,” Phi Mu sophomore Meera Valliath wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Each Powder Puff team is coached by a different fraternity. The Phi Mu team was coached by members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE), Alpha Phi by Alpha Delta Phi (Wawa), Kappa Kappa Gamma by Sigma Phi Epsilon (SigEp) and Pi Beta Phi by Beta Theta Pi (Beta).

This was the sixth year that Powder {uff is in its current form on campus. “Prior to that, the teams were of mixed sorority affiliations and different classes played each other such as first year students vs. sophomores,” Coordinator of Greek Life & Orientation, Rachel Drennen, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

To prepare for the event, members of the Panhellenic Council and JHU Greek life worked to reserve a field and schedule intramural referees to facilitate the event. From there, the success of the event is left mainly up to the sororities.

“The different sororities engage in a great deal of planning to prepare themselves for the tournament. The individual sororities select their  own players and captains. They select their own coaches, memorize game plays, and have practices in the weeks leading to the tournament. Often, fraternities offer to coach sororities and then the chapters come to the event to support their teams,” Drennen wrote.

Deanna Cotsalas, Vice President of the Panhellenic Council and Pi Beta Phi member, was happy with her team’s preparations. “Pi Beta Phi trained for several weeks with several practices a week. We were coached by Beta Theta Pi. We grew as a team and a sorority during the process having spent several practices conditioning, learning positioning, and running plays,” Cotsalas wrote in an email to the News-Letter.

Drennen was also impressed with the participants’ training. “Each sorority had a unique training process for this year’s Powderpuff match up determined by their captains and coaches.  Many of them engaged in conditioning and structured practices prior to the event,” she wrote. “Sometimes when I walked to my office in the morning over the past few weeks, I saw teams at 8:00 am practice on the Freshman Quad.  The chapters definitely take it very seriously!”

Teams had a lot of team spirit. “We all had matching uniforms, as did all of the sororities,” Cotsalas wrote. “Pi Phi encourages total chapter participation, so we also had our very own cheerleaders.”

The event was well attended with plenty of supporters enjoying the free coffee and donuts and cheering for their friends on the field.

Sophomore Harriet Green enjoyed the event.

“I’m really impressed at how hard they seem to have trained,” Green said. “They have really honed their skills to the nth level.”

Drennen was impressed with the turnout. “The event went very well!” she wrote. “I was impressed with the players’ and coaches’ dedication; I was also impressed by the number of students who came out to support their teams. We owe a big, big thank you to the Recreation Center for letting us use the facility and to Intramurals and Sport Clubs for the awesome referees.”

Cotsalas was similarly positive about the event. “Powderpuff is an event that all the sororities look forward to every year,” she wrote. “Besides uniting us as a team, it also unites the Greek community as a whole. The fraternities and sororities bond during practices and the games. Then the sororities get to talk about stories from the year prior and laugh about team similarities. It is a great way to bring everyone together.”

For Valliath, last Sunday’s Powderpuff tournament was not just a way to bring people together but was a lot of fun.

“Walking out onto the field on game day, I think we were all anticipating defeat,” she wrote in an email to the News-Letter. “But from the first play on, we had this unstoppable momentum. Everyone was on top of their game and having a great time. Honestly I have never understood football; I tried out Powderpuff on a whim, and I have loved every minute of it.”