Oozefest at 40

For an event as beloved as Oozefest, the archives bear little mention of its beginnings other than a brief notice on the back page of The Spectrum in the spring of 1984, inviting teams to sign up for the inaugural mud volleyball tournament.

“Oozeball!” the announcement read. “Come out and win a trophy for your team on Saturday, May 5 in Clark Gym at noon.”

What happened when 16 teams showed up to play in the mud on that chilly Saturday afternoon may be long forgotten, but the success of Oozefest is evidenced by next month’s milestone when the tournament turns 40.

“Oozefest has become such a rite of passage at UB that transcends eras and administrations and generations of students,” says Jude Butch, senior associate director of student engagement and the latest in a long line of Oozefest organizers.

“I don’t know what the Oozefest founders were expecting 40 years ago,” he says, “but we are proud of what it has become, which is a bucket-list experience for students at UB.”

Originally known as Oozeball before its name change in the late 1980s, Oozefest grew out of the University Student Alumni Board. The now-defunct student affiliate of the UB Alumni Association was created to assist in promoting a lifetime of involvement with the university.

At the time, alumni associations from other universities were spreading the idea of a mud volleyball game to help students decompress before final exams, recalls Debra Palka, who served as a USAB adviser during the 1990s. But, Palka says, equally important to UB was using the tournament to build tradition.

It worked.

Carl Miller and Jason Bellows were freshmen in the Honors College when they took part in their first Oozefest in 1994. They have been participating ever since.

And while their team, “the Sheepherders,” barely touches a volleyball during the year, arguably no one takes Oozefest more seriously. The Sheepherders went so far as to have championship rings made after their “three-peat” in 2022.

“For me it’s just very special to be able to come back,” Miller says. “It’s a chance to see UB again. It’s a chance for me to bond again with Jason. We’ve remained very good friends throughout all these years. He was my best man at my wedding.”

The only team with more Oozefest experience is “Poached Trout in a White Wine Sauce.” Craig Caplan and crew started Poached Trout — a Monty Python reference — while students in 1990. While they have never won the tournament in their more than 30 years competing, their flair for costumes is unmatched.

One year they showed up in Santa suits, another year in gorilla costumes. They’ve played dressed as clowns and cowboys and chefs and astronauts and superheroes. One year, they competed in wetsuits then floated away on Lake LaSalle. For the 25th anniversary, the team arrived in a limousine and were led to the mud pits by members of the UB marching band.

Poached Trout has since bowed out as winners of the costume competition. Instead, they now choose the winner and pay that team’s entry fee for the following year to keep the tradition alive.

“Oozefest has been a way for this group of friends to stay connected — stay connected to each other and the university,” Caplan says.

“We never expected it to be a tradition, but it has really taken on a life of its own and something we look forward to every year,” he says. “A lot of people go their separate ways after college, or maybe one or two people keep in touch, but this has kept us together in ways we may not have been otherwise.”

UB wasn’t the first university to have a mud volleyball tournament — the University of Connecticut also started one in 1984 — but it grew to one of the largest. What began with 16 squads was capped at 192 teams, some of which would travel from colleges throughout the Northeast, Midwest and Canada.

As Oozefest grew, it also evolved.

Once played on a few makeshift courts near the bookstore, the tournament moved to where the South Lake Village Apartments now stand before settling into its current location on 24 courts at the corner of Frontier Road and St. Rita’s Lane.

The format changed from single to double elimination and teams were later separated into divisions based on their desire to compete or just have fun.

For a while, the “e” in Oozefest was dropped.

Adding a level of unpredictability to the annual event was Buffalo’s spring weather. One year, the tournament could be so wet and cold teams would forfeit games; another year players would walk away with a sunburn.

Mud was the only constant.   

“It didn’t look too bad, so I took a step onto the court and instantly sank eight inches into the sloppiest, coldest mud I have ever had the pleasure (or displeasure) of feeling,” Oozefest participant Shawn Mattaro wrote in 1990 for The UB Reporter.

Days before the teams converge, the ground is tilled by University Facilities and volunteers clear the courts of rocks and remnants of past Oozefests — a lost shoe here, a water bottle there.

Early Oozeballers recall using rototillers and buckets of water from Lake LaSalle to muddy the courts before the Getzville Fire Company was called to lend a hand. For decades now, the fire company arrives the day before to flood the courts with tens of thousands of gallons of water pumped from the lake.  

“Not all courts are the same,” explains Miller. “Some of the courts are just thick mud that maybe cover your shoes. And then you have other areas that are much more soupy. I’ve stepped in and it’s gotten up to a foot and half on me.”

It’s no easy feat pulling off Oozefest for 40 years.

The tournament takes about a year of planning and organizing, from promoting the event in the fall to registering teams in the spring to cleaning up the muddy aftermath. Then, the day after it ends, the process starts all over again, says Patricia Starr, who oversaw the event during the 2000s.

“It’s a lot of work, but it was my favorite thing by far,” says Clayton Connor, who took over the Oozefest reins during the 2010s. “It’s one of the few longstanding traditions at the university and people love it. I could talk about Oozefest all day.”

Oozefest bounced back in 2022 after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the tournament for two years in a row.

At one point during the past decade, there was some thought of whether to retire Oozefest, as priorities of alumni engagement shifted. That’s when the tournament found a new home in Student Life and later the Office of Student Engagement under the supervision of Butch and Director Phyllis Floro.

This year Oozefest is on May 4 — nearly 40 years to the day it all began.

Student Engagement created a special 40th anniversary logo and collected photos of past tournaments to be shown on a big screen. There also will be a cake-eating contest.

“Because what’s a birthday/anniversary celebration without cake?” Butch asks.

Registration is still open until April 28.

The Sheepherders will be there. Miller says he’ll keep showing up until he can’t play any longer. Poached Trout will be there, too — in costume, of course.

“I used to say we’ll keep going until we win one,” Caplan says. “Now, I say we’ll keep going until someone breaks a hip.”