Revealed: my dodgeball shame
Yes, for an instant, despite the quiver of spongy, vivid spheres arrowing about and upside my hungover head, it wanders, naturally enough, to Wordsworth.
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!” he wrote of the French Revolution. However, I’m confident that had he come upon a host of Dodgeballs rather than daffodils in his time, than perhaps he may have poetically praised this noble sport as well.
And it was grand to be young and be in the Mardyke Arena in Cork for the first heat of the National Dodgeball Championships one morning recently. The game (sometimes called killer ball, excitingly) is a simple one. Three members from each six-a-side team race to a ‘dead zone’ on the halfway line and grab as many of the three eight-inch rubber balls as they can. The object of the game is to get other players out by hitting them with a ball or by catching their throws. A player is also out if he or she steps over a boundary line when dodging or throwing a ball and there are no head shots (this may be important later). A team wins when it eliminates all of its opponents or whoever has the most left playing at the end.
My team, like the first act in a formulaic heist movie, was assembled from a colourful cast of differing characters. Friends, cousins, girlfriend(s), workmates and an uncle (who had to be back at the hospital before teatime) completed a crack team that sent shockwaves through the arena when we strode – in slow motion and to a Tarantino-esque soundtrack – to take our seats high in the bleachers.
The tournament hosts, UCD Dodgeball Club, had encouraged participants to pick a ‘cool’ team name and dress in costumes accordingly. Like any good heist movie outfit, we were incognito (read: disorganised and lazy) so we were given t-shirts like the poor kids who turned up for sports day in their corduroys and Clarkes.
The rest, however, were loudly chasing each other around in eye liner and banana hammocks. Think The Rocky Horror Show meets The Breakfast Club.
However, this get-together and the sport’s upsurge in interest are largely due to another Hollywood production; Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. In an effort to save their gym, Average Joe's, a bunch of loveable losers, challenge Ben Stiller’s muscle heads of Globogym at a dodgeball tournament. Naturally, the losers prevail. But then that’s the silver screen.
We take the court after some time sitting on the sidelines working ourselves into frenzy, sharing one asthma inhaler and quickly reading a copy of the rulebook which is passed around like currency.
We line up against a team representing Leeside’s firemen. In the course of their workday they put an axe through a front door before the difficult part. The most dangerous moments in my job are filing an expenses claim. It’s best of three games but there’s no need for a third game, let’s say. Which is good news for kittens stuck in nearby trees, at least.
After some encouraging words and a recovery medley as Paul O’Connell would recommend, we’re ready to put the fear of God into the Wellie Warriors – our next opponents. Though vastly improved, we miss out. Morale is low. Our final game is academic; we’re not going to be heading to the finals in Dublin; we’re beaten but as yet unbowed.
If this was a Coen Brothers movie, our opponents would stride through the swinging double doors in tight, black uniforms, slicked-back hair, and toothpicks hanging from sneering mouths. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the bad guys.
Risking my professional and personal reputation, I’ll continue to tell this sorry tale. The initial run at the dodgeballs is usually exciting stuff – but our new enemies start running way before the whistle from the lacklustre official. She is twirling a plait of flaxen hair and idly scraping lint from her t-shirt as she nonchalantly offers a peep of the whistle.
We protest, loudly, until the now spittle-covered student who sacrificed her weekend so I could try a new sport agrees reluctantly to a restart. Grace being over-rated, I instruct my team not to contest the next dead ball, compelling the cheaters to run half the length of the court for nothing. A moral victory, for a very, very small man indeed.
At 1-1 the final game is a battle of wills. Once more I am on the sidelines because I stepped outside them again (doctors have since told me this reveals a lot about my boundary issues). When it comes down to two against our one and they hit her in the head – a taboo in this sport – and the ref neglects to dismiss the offender, I offer a John McEnroe-with-violent-Tourette’s impression from the tramline. When the offence is repeated immediately, we rush the court, I volley a dodgeball in our shocked opponents’ direction – missing, aptly – then threaten violence before we’re awarded yet another restart.
WAITING, I’m reminded of the story of a referee squeezing a football to test it before he throws it in for the start of a replay following a particularly dirty drawn derby. “Lob it in ref,” one player whispers, “we won’t be using it much anyway.”
We ultimately lose, and leave a hall that we’ve stunned into silence, the initial air of bonhomie now shattered. This was dodgeball’s Ben Johnson moment. My press pass and poetic licence are eventually revoked by the NUJ.
“Some people do take it very, very seriously,” explains founder of the UCD club Suzanne O’Reilly, when I ring her afterwards, not revealing I’m the one who behaved like Kim Jong Il losing a game of Connect Four. “The point is, it’s not for the hyper-competitive. Will you play again?” I certainly will. Just as soon as the six-month suspension is served.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
