I recently became aware that several school districts around the country are banning dodgeball. The main reasons being that it is dangerous, it doesn’t have any educational value, and it is emotionally damaging to the less athletic kids. Obviously, they left out the most horrific thing of all… it’s fun.

I'd like to take a moment to examine these charges in more detail.

Dodgeball has no educational value.

Dodgeballists, as I have come to call them, say,

I think that nothing could develop you reflexes and motor skills better than trying to catch a ball that has been launched at your head from a few feet away from some dude named Meat. Let’s not forget focus. These days, every third kid is diagnosed with ADD and the only thing they can focus on for more than a few seconds is video games. You see the kids in soccer and baseball and they are bored because the action is slow. They start dancing around or daydreaming without penalty other than the coach telling them to get ready. Well, in dodgeball, there is no time for that crap. You either focus on the action at hand or they will be peeling you off the hardtop. There ain’t no flower picking or cloud watching in dodgeball.
I don’t know what these anit-dodgeball pansies expect to learn from sports, but I figure I learned as much playing dodgeball as I did playing any other game. By the way, WTF did we learn by climbing the rope or swinging on the parallel bar?

Dodgeball is physically dangerous.

I haven’t seen the numbers, but I’ll wager everything I own that more bones are broken on jungle gyms and other metallic climbing contraptions on the playground than occur while playing dodgeball. I’d say the worst injury you could get playing dodgeball would be a bloody nose. Oh, the horror! I got a bloody nose once just from passing my son to his mom when he was an infant. He suddenly arched his back and I got a rear head butt straight on the nose. I never really considered holding infants a dangerous activity. I won’t even bring up the damage that riding a bike can cause - up to and including death. I guess we’ll be removing all the bike racks from school soon.

So is dodgeball really dangerous? I don’t think so. Well, it’s about as dangerous as holding an infant.

Dodgeball is emotionally damaging and humiliating to the less athletic kids

Here are the two main psychological beefs.

1. When picking the teams, the kids who get picked last are emotionally scarred.
2. The fear of getting nailed with a ball and getting hurt.

This I kind of understand, but listen up kids, “people will be judging you and selecting you based on your skills your whole freaking life. If you want to rise to the top and be picked first at anything, you have be inherently good at it, or you have to work hard for it. So quit whining about it and start to work on getting better. If you still suck after working hard, well... maybe it’s time to try something else.”
Oh yeah, “And shut the hell up about it.”

Everybody has different fears and there are many ways young students will get embarrassed before they make it through the school system. I was terrified of doing anything in front of the class. I would do just about anything to try to get out of it. I would feint sickness for days, I would get in trouble on purpose. Maybe even pick a fight. I know other guys who dreaded math class and the teacher would pick them to come to the board to do a simple problem and they would be humiliated. Possibly scarred for life.

I don’t see how the various bouts of humiliation are any different from one another. If you eliminated everything that may cause emotional distress from schools there would be nothing left but lunch. Although, I’m sure one of these wussies could come up with a reason why lunchtime is horrible for kids.

In Conclusion

I think it comes down to this. There are a few wimps out there that had a hard time at sports when they were a kid and now that they are adults, they’re finally going to try to do something. Possibly sparing fellow wimps some of the hardships of childhood. I'll wager that these guys have never had the thrill of catching the ball fired off by the biggest kid on the other team or being one of the last two kids on your side and wiping out the entire enemy and for a fleeting minute or two being the hero of your peers. Like all other sports and games, there are highs and lows. There are achievements and disappointments, but in the end it is about fun and excitement.

Quick Point - You can’t bring all the sports down to the weakest kids in the class. Just like you wouldn’t bring down the reading level to the weakest reader in the class. If you did that, you would have an entire class full of uncoordinated pussies reading at a dyslectic level.

My son is tiny. According to my doctor, 95% of kids his age are bigger than him. He plays dodgeball at the daycare with kids up to 4 years older than him and he loves it. Before writing this I asked him what he thought about it and he said, “one time I got a big kid out” with a huge grin on his face. I asked him if he ever gets hurt and he said, “sometimes”. I asked, “Why do you play if you get hurt sometimes?”

“Duh, because it’s fun!”