“I’m ecstatic, dude. It’s going to be so fun to play another Michigan-based roundnet team. Lance has been able to grow the Oakland club too — it makes me so happy,” Michigan State University Roundnet Club’s Nathan Warner said, grinning, “OU’s going down, though. No chance.”

Naturally, plenty of amicable trash talk prefaced what Oakland University’s Roundnet Club had branded the “OU vs. MSU Showdown” — a rivalry-laced scrimmage at the IM West facility on Michigan State University’s campus Friday, Feb. 20. The scrap was equal parts competition and celebration of an innovative pastime steadfastly strengthening its reputation as a bona fide collegiate sport.

For Oakland’s own, the trip to Lansing represented far more than an early-weekend matchup. The scrimmage served as an inaugural milestone amidst the club’s current season of unprecedented expansion.

“At this point, we are the largest that we’ve ever been,” club treasurer and de facto leader Lance Markowitz said. “We have 14 people right now that are scheduled to go to compete in sectionals… it is a giant team, and we’re super excited.”

Markowitz, who worked with MSU to coordinate the scrimmage, has helped shepherd the club from a small pickup circle into its current burgeoning roster. Attendance at indoor sessions initially surged after an early-semester schedule adjustment to later evening hours. On a recent Monday, 24 students crowded the Recreation Center nets to join in.

“We’ve been super, super happy with the growth of the club,” Markowitz said. “Between changing up the timeslot, promoting the heck out of the OU vs. MSU Showdown, working towards getting official OU jerseys and shorts… it was very exciting to see these things have such an impact.”

The jerseys, planned to arrive shortly, received both sponsored and administrative support. Markowitz said they symbolize the greater arc of a team firmly on the upswing.

“It definitely is helping us feel like we’re a part of something… like it’s a competitive sport, as opposed to a casual, ‘We go and play when we want to,’ thing,” Markowitz said. “We’re now representing our school and I think that’s very exciting for all of us.”

Roundnet — also known by the brand name Spikeball — is played two-on-two around a small, trampoline-like net, off of which players must set and spike a small ball in volleys to score points on the opposing duo. The ease of portability has become an essential aspect of the sport’s recognizable charm in certain circles across campus.

OU’s Michael Zysnarski and his teammates have helped stage brief, spontaneous “spiking in obscure locations” moments around campus, from South Foundation Hall to the eighth floor of the Math and Science Center.

“If it’s open and it’s got a floor, a roundnet is going on the floor,” Michael Zysnarski said. “We want to put our name out there, through social media, spiking in obscure locations and just having fun with it. Anytime, anywhere.”

The unfettered spontaneity has fueled recruitment. So has word of mouth.

“There has been a culture shift in the club, like, ‘Hey, competing is fun,’” Markowitz said. “People that were on different sports teams started bringing out their friends. If people want to be on the team, they’re on the team.”

With 15 Oakland players making the trip to Lansing, the team split into custom Division I and Division II squads of eight and seven, respectively. OU Roundnet also plans to compete in Division 2 at the March 28 Spring Sectionals at Ohio State University, hoping to test their mettle and blaze a trail toward Nationals qualification.

“For our first year, we are definitely more so just taking each match as it comes,” Markowitz said. “We really need game experience against better players to get better.”

Though the team as a whole had yet to face off against another team in a formal scrimmage, OU Roundnet Club Vice President Jeremy Matzinger expressed particular interest in trouncing the experienced Spartans.

“I can’t wait to get some wins here and show MSU how much better we’ve gotten,” Jeremy Matzinger, the club’s vice president, said. “I was looking at the footage from the last time I played against them, and I’ve gotten like 10 times better.”

Inside IM West, numerous matches unfolded simultaneously across the astroturf. Each net saw roughly eight 15-minute games. The pace was brisk; if final tallies were taken, they would have told only a small part of the story.

“MSU is like the top of the nation for spikeball,” OU’s Ben Drummelsmith said. “They’re just on another level… but we uplift each other.”

In one match — lacking a 16th teammate to even out the player count — MSU’s Yanaq Quispe filled in to pair up with OU’s Gaurav Mahlawat. Unfamiliarity with each others’ playing styles proved no impediment, and the duo delivered a decisive win. The cross-team pairing symbolized a key strength of the budding collegiate roundnet community: the evident camaraderie between rival teams.

“It was definitely a huge change, because we were taught a different way to play than they were at Oakland,” Quispe said. “But we had a lot of the bases covered.”

“We were dominating them from the beginning of the game,” Mahlawat said. “My setting was good, and my partner was converting them into points. It was my best match — it was not close.”

By night’s end, exertion and fatigue culminated in a resounding optimism.

“We’re not letting it get to our heads,” OU’s Zayaan Ansari said. “We’re having fun and we’re learning from it. It’s not just like, ‘We have to win.’ It’s a learning experience.”

OU’s Nick Zysnarski affirmed that the team’s recent development bodes well for performance at future competitions.

“The community of our club has grown exponentially since the fall,” he said. “We used to have fewer than 10 members come to practice, and now we have a full four nets going every single practice… I’ve seen improvement from everyone. This is huge going into sectionals.”

Spikeball nets will return to the Recreation Center floor Monday and Thursday nights from 8 to 10 p.m., open to anyone willing to step in. Some will come for casual pickups. Others will chase sharper defensive positioning or a cleaner ‘butter set.’

For a club that once struggled to fill a single Division II roster, this latest incarnation’s recent excursion heralded a tight-knit, self-built team whose devotion to the unique sport might be its greatest competitive advantage.

“We’re that underdog coming into the tournament,” Nick Zysnarski said. “They see us as little Oakland University… But we’re the real deal. I just can’t wait to prove ourselves at Ohio State.”