Dodge ball takes players back to elementary school

Remember the boys at fifth-grade recess? There were the scary ones, the mean ones and the nice ones. Fast forward a few decades. They are all grown up, dangerously full of testosterone, and they lift weights on the weekends. Now imagine them back in your elementary school gym, hurling those same liver-colored rubber balls a hundred times harder than they ever could back then, aiming at you.

That’s what an afternoon with the Los Angeles Dodgeball Society is like.

Every Sunday, several dozen men -- and a few women -- gather at the Hollywood Recreation Center to play dodge ball. The sport has been banned in many school districts across the nation because of its violence, but it’s making a comeback among some adults. With the sport’s incursion into popular culture this summer -- the television show “Extreme Dodgeball” debuted last Tuesday on the Game Show Network, and the movie “DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story” opened in theaters Friday -- the sport is likely to grow trendier.

Rusty Walker, the president and chief executive of the International Dodge-Ball Federation, which was founded in 1997 and has organized leagues in 22 states and seven countries, estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 adults are playing dodge ball in the United States this year.

“Children have always been strong, but adults have just taken off in the last two years,” Walker said recently.

I ventured onto the dodge ball court last weekend to get beyond the hype -- and see what kind of workout the game offers.

Organizer Michael Costanza, 30, had told me beforehand to wear sweatpants. He said that “girls” bruise easily and that some of his players had gotten some nasty black-and-blues.

With that warning in mind, I headed into the rec center.

It was a vintage 1970s gym, with brick walls, wooden floors and folding metal chairs hidden in giant drawers under a stage with a brown velvet curtain. Costanza (sidelined because of a non-dodge ball injury) stood on the center line decked out in retro garb: ‘70s gym shorts, a headband and gym socks hiked up to his knees. The Bee Gees, Talking Heads and Michael Jackson blared from a boombox.

“The whole idea is to take it back to elementary school,” said Costanza, a former film production assistant who founded the league on a lark last summer. The league now boasts 400 members.

Costanza, who will soon stage games in West L.A. and in Silver Lake, said all locations will try to tap into grade-school nostalgia with old-fashioned gyms and tunes that were popular back when the players were learning to read. Scanning the gym, I saw that most players seemed to be in their 20s and early 30s. At 37, I was definitely at the geriatric end of the player age-range.

Costanza quickly explained the rules. All players line up on the center line and count off -- odds on one team, evens on the other. Six balls are lined up on the center line. When the whistle blows, everyone runs to get the balls. If you get hit before the ball bounces, you are out. If you catch a ball, the person who threw it is out, and one of your teammates reenters the game. In this league (unlike the movie), if you bean someone in the head, they aren’t out. When you eliminate everyone on the other team, your team wins.

I am a woman of courage. But when I stepped onto the court with 30 grown men hurling balls at each other, I was terrified. These people had techniques. They went for the jugular. I suspected they practiced at home.

“Dodge ball is a game of violence, exclusion and degradation,” “DodgeBall” guru Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn) says in the movie. It’s true.

As the balls flew, I felt myself growing giddy. Not from fun, from fear. A guy next to me handed me my first ball. I grabbed it and threw. I felt as if my arm had been ripped from the socket.

“You haven’t used these muscles since elementary school,” Costanza said. “You’ll get through it. The first time out is the worst. Just soak in the tub tonight.”

It was crazy. It was chaotic. There was nowhere to hide. Balls careened around the gym at high speeds, hitting walls, ceilings and players with that distinctive rubbery “boink.”

Men became boys. Women became girls. Short, slow people became targets. Everyone seemed to revert to their elementary school personas.

The first few times out on the court I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t duck, dodge or dip. I was out before I broke a sweat. But then I got into it. I perfected my throw. I got someone out. Between catching, throwing and dancing to dodge the ball, my grown-up self noted, the game uses a variety of skills and muscle groups.

“My heart rate is really up,” said Lonnie Moore, 31, a first-timer like myself, as he stood waiting to get back in the game. “I think it’s a combination of nerves and adrenaline.”

We were playing with 15 people on a team. If you could stay in until teams got down to eight, or six, or four, or one, the sweat flowed. “I would rate it with Jazzercise or Richard Simmons,” Costanzo quipped. “And we have never had any traumatic injuries.”

The session lasts three hours but I quit after an hour and a half. I had burned 360 calories and my throwing arm was so sore I could barely steer my car for two days.

Just like in grade school, not everyone seemed to be having fun. Some of the women looked as if they had been dragged there.

Other people had other goals.

“I’m not out here to have fun,” said Tod Gallagher, 27, one of the hard-core players. “Fun is the last thing I am out here to do. I’m here to crush people.”

Gallagher has played dodge ball every week for the last year and a half. He is so addicted to dodge ball that when he moved to Texas for a while, he flew back on weekends to play. He says he likes dodge ball because it is a combination of individual and team sport. And he dismisses the angle, taken by some journalists and the makers of the movie, that adult dodge ball players are just all the dorks from elementary school, grown up and back for revenge.

It was hard to shake that feeling. Like at the end of one game, when six guys lined up, surged forward to bombard the only remaining player on the other team -- a small man backed up against the wall praying for his life.

“This is just like junior high,” said Dale Smith, 34, shaking his head. “There is this little guy, and everyone is lining up, ready to knock his head off.”

Maybe that is what keeps people coming back for more.

“I don’t know if it is good for actors, or any profession where your appearance is your livelihood,” Smith said. “But for us normal people, it’s a lot of fun. You can get out your aggressions and come back on Monday with peace in your heart.”