COLUMN: Solutions in Sports – Real-life benefits of dodgeball unavoidable
Though sports focus in on many different skills, most of those skills are hardly useful in real life situations. Granted football, basketball and baseball are all really fun to play and watch, but how many times do you need to use athletic skills to get past big guys in pads on your way to class while holding an oblong ball, or use a big wooden stick that hits spherical objects in order to get a better test score (though that might be worth looking into)?
Bearing this in mind, I feel there is only one sport that requires the type of athletic skills that could be relevant in real life. There should be no surprise to discover that I’m talking about that age old, elementary school
playground staple sport, dodgeball.
While I’m sure most of you look back on your elementary school dodgeball experiences with fondness (unless of course you were one of the unfortunate kids who happened to be hospitalized by an unusually fierce dodgeball bout), you might be asking what type of skills dodgeball has that could possibly serve you in real-life situations.
To answer that we have to ask ourselves what type of skills dodgeball requires in the first place. Actually, that answer is quite simple: there is the skill of dodging (hopefully that’s obvious), and the skill of throwing an object at a target.
Now, if you think about it closely, most of the great tragedies in our world today could be avoided by at least some level of the previously mentioned dodgeball skills. Though I personally think these avoidable tragedies should be quite obvious, I’m more than willing to list off some real life applications of dodgeball skills.
For example, the ability to dodge bullets would be extremely helpful in many situations. Dodging your local tax collector could come in handy at certain times of the year. Then there are the everyday life things like dodging quick-moving bikes, longboards, or scooters on campus.
As for the skill of throwing an object at any given target, the real life applications for this could be endless. Some examples are throwing groceries into your shopping cart, throwing dirty clothes into a laundry basket, throwing rotten fruit at someone on stage or throwing something at the channel changer on your TV when you lose your remote. Another thing not as obvious but just as important would be the skill of accurately throwing a canister of tear gas into a contained area in a case of dire necessity, most likely in a classroom setting during a final of some sort.
Now, while all these are very practical uses for dodgeball skills in real life, I’d like to bring to your attention a real life application that I think happens to go toward a noteworthy cause. On Nov. 20 of this month, some USU students will be putting on a dodgeball tournament, where any and all can come to showcase his or her honed dodging and throwing skills. The added bonus to this upcoming tournament is that the fees paid for registration will go entirely towards the Huntsman Cancer Institute, and the funds will be used locally for something such as getting wigs for people going through chemotherapy.
If you would like to put together a team (six players), then you can contact the organizers of the tournament at dodgeforacause@hotmail.com or keep your eyes open in the TSC as they will have a booth set up there as the month progresses, or you could even ask me and I can get you sent in the right direction.
Well, I think I’ve made my point about dodgeball and its real life applications. In hindsight, you may wonder at the need of looking so deeply into such a seemingly elementary sport. Wait till I get going on air hockey.
Marty Reeder is a senior majoring in history education. Comments or questions will be effectively dodged at martr@cc.usu.edu