There’s nothing more fun — or more frustrating — than playing volleyball in a mud pit.

Just ask dozens of Lawrence High School students who did just that Sunday at Broken Arrow Park. They played on nearly 60 teams with names such as Mudgeezers, Eight Losers and a Midget, and Muddle-Headed Mudslingers, to mention a few.

To make it to the final championship round, they needed to figure out how to maintain footing, learn to slap the ball with mudcovered hands without losing control and keep the mud out of their eyes, players said.

“You definitely need goggles,” said David Stagsdill, 17, a junior who played on a team called Cookie Machine.

But Stagsdill wasn’t as concerned about losing his footing in the mud.

“That just increases the fun,” he said.

The students played on four volleyball courts that had been dug out by Douglas County work crews and then flooded by the Wakarusa Township Fire Department.

When a game was over, the players could either clean off by jumping into a tub of water or showering themselves with clean water from a sprinkler or hose.

Lawrence High School sophomores Elisa Gill, 16, and Abbey Murray, also 16, find hilarity in their mud-covered state during a mud volleyball tournament at Broken Arrow Park. The muddy games Sunday were just for fun, according to Jo Huntsinger, who helped to organize the event.

Showering was definitely necessary, according to Shane Bartlett, a senior on the Draw Scabs team.

“It gets all crusty after a while,” Bartlett said.

But the secret to playing volleyball in the mud was really the same as playing on a dry court, according to Diana Lawrence, a senior and one of Bartlett’s teammates.

“You’ve got to be snappy,” she said.

This was the 18th year for the LHS mud volleyball single-elimination tournament. It served no purpose other than to be fun, said Jo Huntsinger, one of the organizers of the event and the LHS girls’ volleyball team coach.

Winners were not available Sunday night.

Twice the threat of lightning and bad weather forced a halt to the action and students and onlookers took refuge in cars, Huntsinger said. Lightning detectors were used to help decide how threatening the weather was, she said.