02 Jul Broadview Bombers Edge Weekend Wifflers to Stake Claim as Champions of SLAMT1D’s The Greatest WIFFLE Ball Team Name Ever!
Broadview Bombers Edge Weekend Wifflers to Stake Claim as Champions of SLAMT1D’s The Greatest WIFFLE Ball Team Name Ever!
No WIFFLE Ball last weekend, but we had NAMES!
Last weekend eighteen teams, 240 players and hundreds of fans would’ve been together at SLAMT1D’s annual Vermont Summer Classic WIFFLE Ball Tournament at Little Fenway. While COVID-19 forced the postponement of the tournament ’til next June, it didn’t stop the SLAMT1D family from having a different, albeit “virtual” kind of fun.
Since June 1, SLAMT1D’s The Greatest WIFFLE Ball Team Name Ever! tournament’s 64 team names were whittled down to two through four brackets of social media voting. Yes, linguists, etymologists and a few hundred fans would’ve pushed for potent team names such as the Purple Pumpers, Bat Attitudes, Not My Type or Steel Horse Sisters; but it came down to four, then two, and ultimately one team that prevailed with a solid name and a savvy social media game plan.
The four semifinalists were Sick of Pricks (a heavy “name” favorite in the field) vs. Broadview Bombers and the Dugout Dawgs vs. the Weekend Wifflers.
The Broadview Bombers hit the ground running in their match-up against Sick of Pricks and while the vote gap would occasionally tighten, the Bombers maintained a consistent flow of votes that kept them a safe distance ahead of Sick of Pricks, finishing 499 votes Bombers, 393 to Sick of Pricks. The Bombers continuous pressure would serve them well in the The Big One.
The other semifinal was a nail-biter. The Dugout Dawgs and Weekend Wifflers traded leads throughout the match. As they headed into the final minutes of voting, the margin was single digits until the end. The Dawgs took the FaceBook voting with a four-point margin (529-525), but the Wifflers Twitter difference (21-4) gave them a razor-thin margin (546-533) to push them into the championship game against the Bombers.
Both teams led their social media fan bases into The Big One thinking they’d need 700, maybe 800 votes to win. They were wrong. Voting started June 26, Thursday night. The Bombers and Wifflers stayed neck and neck from the outset, with the Bombers’ Mike and Mikey Pascento leading their social media outreach while Dan Pion and Collin Chevalier pushed the Wifflers’ fan base to vote and then “share” 
nonstop. It seemed no one slept. By Saturday afternoon with only a few hours left, both teams realized that a 800-vote win was in the rear-view mirror. They each smoked through 900 votes despite FaceBook shutting down page-sharing because the volume of activity was so unusual for our page! A handful of votes separated them. One last surge would put either team on top. As both teams broke the 1,000-vote mark, the Bombers put the pedal through the floor, edging the Wifflers by a vote count of 1,118 to 1,054 to take the championship!
T1D Awareness won! Fun won! Family won! T1Ders won!
Over 50,000 people were reached on FaceBook while there were 10,300 Tweet impressions on Twitter!
7,483 votes were cast in the tournament!
The Broadview Bombers’ Mike Pascento told us they’ve selected Black Flannel Brewery as their restaurant to celebrate with the team ($200 Gift Certificate). You know what’s cool about that? The Bombers live in Connecticut and Florida, while Black Flannel opens on July 2…in Vermont! The Bombers are already planning their trip to next year’s Vermont Summer Classic and they want to support a local business near the tournament, who also happens to have a team in the Summer Classic and will be competing against the Bombers next year! It’s that spirit that brings us all together to support people battling T1D!