University of Akron (UA) senior Alexis Schultz, the three-time National Collegiate Dodgeball Association Women’s Player of the Year, has been named to the Team USA practice squad with an opportunity to be named to the world championship team in 2026.
Schultz, a mechanical engineering major from Stow, Ohio, will attend a training camp in Kansas in October. The top performers from that camp will participate in the North American and Caribbean Dodgeball Championship tournament in November, followed by another camp in spring 2026. The roster for the world championships will be named later in spring 2026 based on individual performances at the camps and tournament. The site and dates for the world championship competition, which is held every other year, have not yet been announced.
Schultz was scouted for the national practice team at recent USA League tournaments in Cleveland and Minneapolis. It was her first time participating at that level of competition, but Schultz was likely well known to national team scouts. In addition to her three Player of the year titles, she helped lead the Zips to National Collegiate Dodgeball Association championships in 2024 and 2025.
“It was really surprising and I’m just very grateful,” Schultz said of making the national practice team. “Based on how I did in the college league, I was getting a lot of recognition, but the people who play in the USA League are the top of the top competition. So hearing that the scouts thought I compared to them was really exciting. I had never seen USA League myself, so I didn’t know the level of the league. I didn’t know if I was going to show up and get blown out of the water. Now I feel like I have a pretty good shot at making the [worlds] roster.”
There were 26 women named to the national team, from which 11-12 will be named to the women’s worlds team and another 5-6 to the mixed men’s and women’s worlds team.
A Williams Honors College scholar, Schultz was reassured that her new role with the national team will not impact her participation in the 2025-26 college dodgeball season. It should also not take too much time away from her other extracurricular activities, which include membership in UA’s chapters of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society and Society of Women Engineers, and a remote part-time job at Collins Aerospace.
Schultz’s biggest challenge may be learning the ins and outs of a new piece of equipment. For the practice squad, she will compete with a foam ball, which is one of two types of balls – the other is a cloth ball – used at the world level. In collegiate dodgeball, teams use what are known as 8.5 pinch and no-sting balls. The former is a ball with a circumference of 8.5 inches made from a material that allows players to "pinch" or grip the ball effectively, and the latter is a ball that is designed to reduce the sting players feel when they are hit.
Schultz’s UA teammates plan to help her make the transition.
“The court size for foam is a lot smaller so you have less time to react, and the ball moves very quickly,” she said. “You have to be so quick compared to the other ball types and you have to learn how to watch the ball and read the spin off the ball. Luckily, I have teammates from Akron who have expressed interest in working with me.”
Media contact: Cristine Boyd, 330-972-6476 or cboyd@uakron.edu