harbinger
issue 4 / october 17, 2005 / 7500 mission road prairie village, kansas
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Students gather to play dodgeball and help save a life by clark goble Most people would head out to Rolling Hills Church at 95th and Nall to talk with their friends in youth group or to sing in the worship. But on Monday afternoons in the auxiliary gym of the church, the only thing being worshipped is dodgeball. “It’s become more than a hobby, it’s a lifestyle,” junior Tyler Enders said. Every Monday, a group of 20-30 East students, mainly upperclassmen, do not meet in the small gym to gossip, discuss the Chiefs game or talk about their grade on that brutal Calc 3 exam. They meet, instead, to knock each other’s heads off with a red dodgeball. “It combines aspects of the best sports,” senior Graham Stark said. “You throw the dodgeball just like a baseball, and you dodge and become aware of the other team’s strategy just like football.” The weekly games were started when co-founders Stark and Enders became interested in holding pick-up games. In the beginning, the games were held on the tennis courts at Kansas City Country Club, but were moved to Rolling Hills after Enders realized his church had an air-conditioned gym. “(The Rolling Hills staff) was nice enough to let us play when we wanted,” Stark said. “We can play more games because people don’t get tired as fast as they do outside.” The rules were modified when the games were moved into the small gym. When a player makes a basket on the basketball goals in the gym from the other side of the floor,
everyone on the team who had been knocked out of the match is allowed back onto the court. “The team goes wild when you swish a shot and get them all back in,” sophomore Gage Brummer said. Dodgeball leagues, featuring similar rules, have been created across the U.S. due to the blockbuster movie ‘Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,’ according to Bill Dupue, spokesman and founder for the National Amateur Dodgeball Association. “We saw a huge increase after the movie came out,” Dupue said. “It became popular with the younger generation because dodgeball wasn’t taught as much in schools in the 90s, and once they saw the movie, they recognized what the game was about.” The rules and strategies are no longer taught in Shawnee Mission schools because of the dangerous aspects of the game, which include throwing small rubber balls at high speeds. “We don’t teach the game (at Belinder Elementary) because of the possible injuries to students,” LeAnn Carver Jones, P.E. teacher, said. The throbbing knees, the rubber burns, or the turned ankles suffered by many of the players don’t make them want to quit. Instead, they wanted to hold a tournament. The tournament, held Oct. 10 and 11 in the gym, didn’t just pit East’s most dangerous dodgeball teams against each other. After the thousands of dollars raised in SM North’s dodgeball tournament last year, SHARE chair Will Gates presented the idea of holding the tournament in honor of
former East student Allison Owens, who will need a kidney transplant in the future. All participants either donated $10 or showed they were organ donors by providing their license. “It’s cool that we can have fun playing dodgeball, and create awareness for organ donations at East at the same time,” senior John McCormick said. There were 20 teams of 8 players entered into the tournament, including one that consisted of Coach Hair and Coach Ricker among others. Sophomore Sam Watson’s team drew the staff team in the first round of the tournament. “We knew it was going to be a tough match,” Watson said. Watson’s team was swept in the best-of-three battle, but still has high hopes for his team if another tournament is held this year, which is a definite possibility due to the high level of participation in this year’s event, Stark said. Two senior-led teams, the Shockers and the Soul, met in the final of the two-night tournament. The Shockers won the first and third games of a three-game series, taking home the glory and the title. Even with a few hardcore teams leaving the gym disappointed in their team’s outcome, almost all will return today, and every Monday, to the small gym where it all was started to have fun playing a game they love. To seek revenge on the team that knocked them out of the tournament. And of course, to dodge.