The VEISHEA festival is still a week away, but the annual VEISHEA tournaments are already here.

“We have a very diverse set of tournaments, ranging from racquetball to ping-pong to softball,” said Brian Capesius, senior in mechanical engineering; who, along with Blake Woebbeking, senior in agricultural business, are this year’s tournament executives for VEISHEA.

A total of 32 tournaments comprise this year’s athletic festivities. Traditional tournament sports such as basketball, football and volleyball are back again. But new events involve some unusual or different styles of competition.

“We build off of last year’s tournaments, kind of look at what they did, what didn’t work and what we thought might work,” Capesius said. “We’ve added about six new tournaments this year. We’ll give it a shot and if it works out good maybe they’ll do it again next year.”

New this year includes a punt, pass and run competition, a variation of the popular punt, pass and kick skills challenge sponsored by the National Football League. Another new event is a 4×4 soccer tournament, where four teams compete against each other on four goals set up in a square formation. The winner is the team that has the least goals scored against them.

But if traditional sports aren’t your thing, other tournaments test your skills at a variety of talents. A laser tag tournament is scheduled for competition at Perfect Games, and there are tournaments for Texas hold ‘em poker and video games such as “Halo” and “Super Smash Bros.”

Most events require a small entry fee ranging from $1 per person for smaller, individual events to $50 per team for flag football.

Capesius said the five-on-five men’s basketball tournament along with sand volleyball and the flag football are the most popular tournaments that require the entry fee, but there are free tournaments that garner just as much attention and participation.

“Texas hold ‘em poker is really popular and the video games are really popular right now,” Woebbeking said. “Most events will fill up fast.”

A new event, racquetball, will kick off this year’s tournament schedule. The racquetball tournament starts Monday at the Lied Recreation Center.

VEISHEA tournaments run April 4 to 16.