(no subject)

[gfish]

Was I the only geek that actually liked dodgeball in school?

Comments

[ionan.livejournal.com]

Nope. I was pretty decent at it.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I did. I didn't like it when I was way disproportionately targeted, but that was rare.

[niac.livejournal.com]

No, you weren't.

[runnerwolf.livejournal.com]

I have crap for eye-hand coordination... and that's an improvement on when I was a kid. I detested dodgeball. Granted I detested most of the sports we played in gym.

[corivax.livejournal.com]

I often got a kick out of being the last person left on my side. Of course, that was mostly because nobody aimed at me, since I wasn't a threat. :)

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Yeah!

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

*looks disappointed*

... You mean I wasn't the last one out because I was good at hiding and not being noticed?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I loved it, but I was physically coordinated and I wasn't bullied. I don't think awkwardness and low social standing are requirements for geekdom, even for tech geeks. (I'm socially but not constitutionally a tech geek; but I think I know what I'm talking about.)

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Ditto: nobody could hit me. I couldn't reliably catch so I was still a target, but I was hard to hit. Unfortunately, people who WERE good at catching were my downfall.

[novalis.livejournal.com]

I still like dodgeball.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

What e said. Should we get up a game?

[novalis.livejournal.com]

Sure. How about July 1, noon, Prospect Park?

[beaq.livejournal.com]

If we can do it at Swope Park (http://www.kcmo.org/parks.nsf/web/swope), you're on.

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Ahh... Such fond memories of Swope Park. The lake, Starlight, some naughty fun on a buddies coat thrown down over the grass... ;)

[najalaise.livejournal.com]

I adored dodgeball until a variant took over which emphasized throwing ability a bit more and seemed to involve larger teams. I'm not sure anymore of the difference in rulesets exactly, but I do remember there suddenly being a huge division in playing styles, where most of the gameplay would be left to the more athletic boys and everyone else sorta lurked behind them.

[book-addict.livejournal.com]

I liked it.
The lack of binocular vision didn't hinder me in dodgeball nearly as much as it did in most other sports. I think it was because the ball tended to travel along less curved trajectories, and closer to the ground (than, say, volleyball.)

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Dude, dodgeball was awesome.

[maribou]

I liked it when we were actually playing and disliked it when the mean kids seemed to use it as an excuse to pick on the unpopular kids and hated it when I was the unpopular kid being picked on... though even then I found it somewhat satisfying that I was always a lot harder to knock out of the game than people expected.

I think it kind of depended on the gym teacher - we had some who were so completely ineffectual and/or assholish that they didn't care if the entire thing degenerated into a beatdown, and others who actually ran it like any other game/sport.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I think that probably hits the nail on the head-- the teachers. I *never* experienced the stereotypical mean kids picking on people or the beatdown thing, nor ever saw it happen to anyone else. Maybe the kids at my school were all supernaturally nice, but it's more likely I just had teachers who were good at keeping things in hand.

And, come to think of it, it was the same school and the same gym teacher from K through 6, so I really only had to get lucky the one time. :)

[mdlbear]

One of the few games I could stand, actually.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

i used to be decent at NOT GETTING HIT!

[creeves78.livejournal.com]

it was about the only gym activity that i DID like. i couldn't catch to save my soul, but i was always good at dodging!

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

Put me down as another geek who liked dodgeball. (Even a bad day playing dodgeball was better than a good day playing kickball, which I absolutely detested.)

[noumignon.livejournal.com]

It may be that geeks officially love dodgeball! I sure did, or prisonball, the variant we played. And I also thought I was the last one left because I was the best dodger, not the worst player!

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Nope. I liked it.

But then, we only played it in elementary school in my district. Nobody was mean about it. I've seen the "dogdeball is hell" stereotype in movies and TV shows, and that just never happened in any class I was ever in.

We mostly did two versions in P.E. at my school. In one, one team lined up on the wall and the other team kicked the red rubber-type balls at people and tried to hit them. You weren't allowed to aim at people's heads if you could help it, and having to kick it rather than throw it kept that kind of thing down, as well. (Harder to aim, for a little kid anyway, and harder to get as much force behind it.)

In the other, half of the class was guarding bowling pins placed around the gym, and the other half tried to throw nerf footballs to knock the bowling pins down from behind a certain line along the wall. If your pin got knocked down, whoever knocked it got to come set it up and take it over, and you had to go be one of the people behind the line. I was never terribly good at keeping a bowling pin alive for long...

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

Loved it — but, as so many others have said, that depends on having a tactics-oriented rather than power-oriented setting.