The third annual Joshua Balara Memorial Powderpuff Tournament is set to take place this Friday memorializing football player Joshua Balara ’24, who passed away in 2023.
The women’s flag football tournament will raise money for a scholarship awarded to a graduating football player at his high school in Dallas, Pa. Members of the men’s football team coach the groups of women, largely organized by Dartmouth sororities.
“For me, it’s just surreal to see that it has kept happening,” one of the tournament’s organizers Kyle Brown ’24 said. “It’s really just like a community event. Everyone’s pitching in. It’s really great.”
Balara’s fraternity, Gamma Delta Chi, takes on much of the organizing. The event has grown every year, according to GDX house manager Nick Marinaro ’25. This year, they are pushing to reach the broader Upper Valley community by opening a kids zone and bringing in the marching band into festivities, according to Ejike Adele ’25.
“The first year, it was a much smaller event,” Marinaro said. “The second year, we made a big leap. The ’24s, they were in Josh’s class, so that was a really big deal for them.”
The faculty game, which was added to the event last year, is returning. College President Sian Leah Beilock and athletic director Mike Harrity are teaming up as co-coaches after facing each other last year. They will face a team coached by faculty advisors for the football team Jason Barabas, Nathaniel Dominy and Jim Feyrer.
Tevita Moimoi ’24 emphasized that the event is a great opportunity for students to connect with faculty members in a unique environment.
“It’s a great opportunity to not only see your professor lecture you, but also see if they got some game on the field,” Moimoi said. “Your professor is more than just someone who stands in front of a whiteboard.”
The teams have prepared extensively for the tournament. They held practices and ran through playbooks to prepare for the competition.
“We run a lot of agility training sessions,” said Eleanor Benton ’25, from the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority team. “What we’ve been working on is a lot of plays. And I can’t necessarily reveal that. It’s not public information. It’s been a lot of fun trying to rally the troops to have that friendly competition aspect around the common cause.”
For the football players, such as Moimoi, coaching these teams is a blast.
“It was hilarious,” Moimoi, who coached Chi Delta sorority’s team last year, said. “Seeing who can throw the ball, catch the ball … Everyone’s just having fun.”
Adele, who has taken up the mantle of lead organizer for the tournament, said that the purpose of the game really comes back to honoring Balara.
“We hope that as many people as possible will be able to see what we’re trying to do and to see how much Josh meant to us,” Adele said.
