Dodging the Wrong Issues

This story appeared in the Washington Post in 2019, talking about trials and tribulations of playing dodgeball.

I would love to know more about the teachers and children observed for this study. I coach young athletes and teach youth athletic development in multiple countries on five different continents. I can say, with zero reservations, that the athletes we coach would play dodgeball every day if we allowed it.

EVERY DAY!

They groan in disappointment when we tell them we’re playing another game.

Dodgeball is not, has never been and never will be the problem. The problem lies with the people teaching the young folks how to play the game and with how the game is used within the curriculum.

You want oppression? How about the assigning and forcing of children as young as second and third grade to do several hours of homework every night?

You want dehumanizing? How about the systematic removal of physical education, music and arts programs throughout education - stripping away three of the most important tools education has that can help create a diversity in thought and an individuality in students that buttresses that diversity?

We are homo sapiens, a species unlike others in the animal kingdom in that we are capable of thought processes well beyond the instinctive and primal. We can learn kindness and niceness while increasing physical and mental dexterity and improving both kinesthetic and vestibular awareness. We can be taught to uplift and support fellow athletes while still doing everything we can to compete our best strive for victory.

Dodgeball is one of the tools we use - successfully - to do that.