Fall has officially begun. The NFL season is in full swing, the leaves are falling off the trees and some of Northern Kentucky University’s women have battled it out for breast cancer.
The Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity hosted its annual Powder-puff Flag Football Tournament on Oct. 6.

According to Matt Bodner, the fraternity’s president, six teams played in the tournament and about 120 women participated in the event. The tournament is exclusively for women.
“There are mostly sorority teams, but in the past, we’ve had several non-Greek teams participate,” Bodner said.

Delta Gamma, Delta Zeta, Kappa Delta, Phi Sigma Sigma and Theta Phi Alpha all created teams for the event, as well as one non-affiliated team named Young, Wild and Free.
According to Bodner, the tournament was a round robin. In this type of tournament, each team competes with each other in the beginning. Depending on those outcomes, the teams are seeded and the actual tournament begins.

“Delta Zeta has won the last four years, so they are going for their fifth,” Bodner said.

In the final game however, Delta Gamma beat the reigning champions with a score of 20-19.

According to Sarah Hemmer, a freshman member of Delta Zeta’s team, they had been preparing for this tournament for a while.
“We had practice every Thursday night for two hours,” Hemmer said. “We also were given plays and studied them.”
Each team was coached by a member of Pi Kappa Alpha and was provided with its own personal cheerleaders.

Colton Taylor, a freshman Pi Kappa Alpha pledge, acted as a cheerleader for Theta Phi Alpha’s team. Taylor, as well as his fellow pledges, dressed up (or down) for the occasion and made sure team morale was high.

“It is kind of an assumed thing [to dress up], otherwise it wouldn’t be as much fun,” Taylor said.

This year, the fraternity chose to donate all proceeds from the event to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Normally, the money goes to St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Pi Kappa Alpha’s national philanthropy.
They made the switch this time because of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “We never put two and two together,” Bodner said.
According to Bodner, the money collected from the event was from T-shirt sales, an entrance fee of $2 and a fee of $100 per team.
The fraternity hopes to send $2,000 to Susan G. Komen from the event after T-shirt sales.