Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: vorticon on May 19, 2004, 04:12:55 PM
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"Adults find exercise in an old playground favorite
PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- If you were one of those kids who never got picked for the dodgeball team, you get a second chance.
The grade school game is now hot among young adults.
"It's ridiculously fun. It's high-energy, you don't stop moving. There's sensory overload," said Colleen Finn, who founded the Portland adult dodgeball league this year.
And throwing a ball hard at someone can be fun, too.
Grown men and women are turning dodgeball into a recreational sport, with pickup games and championship tournaments.
The game's visibility may well grow after this summer's release of a movie starring Ben Stiller, "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story." It's the tale of a group of misfits who want to save their gym from a takeover by a fancy fitness center.
Finn founded the Portland league, which just wrapped up its season, as an indoor activity for kickball players during the city's infamously rainy winters. Word quickly spread, and in less than two weeks she had eight teams.
Players have to be at least 21, because Finn, 25, doesn't want anyone to feel left out if the teams go out for beer after the game.
Fittingly, games are held in the gym of a former elementary school.
"There's always that kid who wasn't picked for a team in the fifth grade," Finn said. "This is the perfect chance for redemption."
The idea is to have fun, so rules are loose. Ten players line up on each end of a court with a line of balls between them. The whistle is a signal to grab the balls and hurl them at each other. If you're hit, you're out; the first team without players loses.
Cameron Levine, the 28-year-old captain of Portland's America's Freedom team, was looking for a group activity that involved "some kind of exercise." He felt limited to pickup basketball games, until he saw an Internet posting for the Portland league. He and several friends signed up.
Between running to catch balls, trying to dodge them and throwing them at opposing players, the movement is constant. While that makes it excellent exercise, dodgeball isn't for the out-of-shape.
"It helps to develop coordination. It's jumping, it's lateral movement, it's throwing. There's a lot of things that enhance fitness. But you typically need to be fit to do it," said Dr. Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine and head of the division of health promotion and sports medicine at Oregon Health & Science University.
Levine said injuries are rare, but at the end of a particularly heated game his arm is sore.
A few years back, the hitting that's intrinsic to the game gave dodgeball a bad reputation in school yards, and some schools talked of banning it.
But the hitting is what appeals to the grownups.
"We got a guy in the foot and took him off his feet. It was awesome," said Sean Tufts, a linebacker who played intramural dodgeball at the University of Colorado. He was recently drafted by the Carolina Panthers.
Gail Wootan, right, playing for America's Freedom, tries to elude a shot from Tube Socks player Daisy Richards, left, during playoffs.
At Kent State University in Ohio, Olsen Ebright is manager of the campus dodgeball club. Pickup games started in 2003, and the game is now officially recognized as a club sport.
"I'm a senior now, and I have so much stress. But on Fridays I get to go throw balls at people for two hours, and the stress is gone," the 22-year-old said. "It's a blast."
There's even a governing body for dodgeball -- the National Amateur Dodgeball Association which holds seven tournaments a year, including the Outdoor Nationals July 23-24 in Schaumburg, just outside of Chicago.
While organizer Bill DePue says the average age for dodgeball enthusiasts seems to be in the mid-20s, a few years ago, one team had players over age 60 in the tournament. All were graduates of the same high school.
"I think it goes back to the fact that everybody's played it," DePue said. "Whether it was dodgeball, bombardment or whatever you want to call it."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/diet.fitness/05/18/dodgeball.grows.up.ap/index.html"
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AWESOME!!!!!
I'm sure I still have all my moves too!!! :rolleyes:
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next biggest craze. There's even a movie coming out.
Since I started hockey I wanted to create a city Adult Dodge Ball league. I'm sure it would be just as brutal as the old days playing with 4 1/2 defalted volleyballs.
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I've been watching this for a few months, hoping it stays going long enogh for me to give it a try. as soon as I'm healed, I'm in.
man what a great stress reliever, I loved that game as a kid.
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In PE in elementary school, we sometimes played as a whole class. I remember vividly, the odd combination of guilt and satisfaction that came with nailing a girl square in the face.
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Originally posted by Capt. Pork
In PE in elementary school, we sometimes played as a whole class. I remember vividly, the odd combination of guilt and satisfaction that came with nailing a girl square in the face.
Heads are in, knockdowns score double...can't wait to see this watermelon on PPV :lol
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lol, the south park episode was great
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Originally posted by Capt. Pork
In PE in elementary school, we sometimes played as a whole class. I remember vividly, the odd combination of guilt and satisfaction that came with nailing a girl square in the face.
LOL Man you nailed that one! I remember that!
:rofl :rofl :rofl
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Portland Community College has a non-credit adult activities class that has all those kid games like Dodgeball and freeze tag. There are even a few dodgeball clubs forming up around the country.
Dodgeball The Movie (http://www.dodgeballmovie.com) with Ben Stiller:
(http://home.comcast.net/~sapathome/wsb/media/165946/site1019.JPG)
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This is great! I could have gone pro in 4th grade.
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Originally posted by mosgood
LOL Man you nailed that one! I remember that!
:rofl :rofl :rofl
ah the memories
..the 6 band geeks huddled in the corner. 5 jocks throwing at the same time , balls bouncing heads like bowling pins.
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OUTStanding!
Now if I can only get my boss and co workers to play!!
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Originally posted by mosgood
LOL Man you nailed that one! I remember that!
:rofl :rofl :rofl
nose still out of joint? :D
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:lol
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Foul! Those aren't regulation-sized balls! The real dodgeballs are red seamless rubber bladders about the size of a soccer ball, not some primary-blue softball-sized things!
I don't know what sort of crazy Yankee rules they were playing by in that CNN article, but down here in the South we played by a different set of rules. One team would form a circle around the other team. One ball would be in play and if you were hit, you were out and you joined the circle. There was no where to run, no where to hide. Constant mayhem!
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I loved dodgeball as a kid !!
I couldn't throw for chit, but for some reason I was always one of the last kids out. Maybe because I was small and fast (note I said fast, not graceful ;) ).
Now.... I'm large, fat, and slow. hehehe
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Murderball was more fun..Maybe they could make a movie with James Caan?..:D
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Dodgeball was a great game BUT it was nothing like Smear the Queer.
Give one kid a football and have as many as possible gang up to chase him all over the playground and tackle his butt. Then whoever picks up the ball in the huge melee is then called the queer. Although in todays PC world it would have to be called "Pile on the Effeminate Individual then apologize for our behaviour".
I really used to like the one that gofaster mentions. We called it circle of death and it would start out with 5 kids in the middle and the rest of the class around them in a circle with two balls instead of one.
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I loved dodgeball, but I still remember the time I got smacked in the gob and my glasses flew off and the lenses popped out. Lucky I didn't get the frame embedded in my skull now that I think about it.
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Originally posted by Vermillion
Maybe because I was small and fast (note I said fast, not graceful ;) ).
gracefull isnt really an asset...i got saved numerous times because i tripped and fell on my face