IM dodgeball shows athletic value of youth games

More and more I find myself thinking I’m an old man.

At the ripe old age of 20.

All thanks to UCLA Recreation.

A few weeks into the dodgeball season, I keep looking back to
those days in elementary school when I used to be a dodgeball
all-star, almost always finding myself the last one standing at the
end of recess.

Fast-forward 10 years to today: Now, after two sanctioned
matches, I’m normally one of the first to be pummeled by the
foam balls used in intramural play at the Student Activities
Center.

It’s quite depressing, to say the least.

After all, I had such potential.

Had I been so skilled at an NCAA-sanctioned sport, you know top
recruiters would have followed me all the way through high school
and aggressively sought my signature on a letter of intent at the
first legally possible moment.

Alas, here I am writing about college athletics instead of being
the one written about.

Mine is a sad, sad story, shared, I’m sure, by hundreds,
maybe thousands across the UCLA campus.

Students whose athletic prime came in their prepubescent years.
Students whose sports traditionally are reserved for school-aged
children ““ they have no place to shine at the collegiate
level.

At least, they had no place until UCLA Recreation added
dodgeball to the winter IM lineup.

Now that there’s a place to relive childhood memories, how
simple would it be to add more sports of yore?

I can see it now. IM four-square and hopscotch playoffs at the
Wooden Recreation Center. T-shirts for sale at the UCLA Store to
commemorate the campus Red Rover and hide-and-seek championships.
Teams practicing from dawn to dusk in the Franklin D. Murphy
Sculpture Garden to improve their freeze-tag skills.

And you know before long the athletic department would see the
popularity of these sports. Athletic director Dan Guerrero would
have no choice but to call up NCAA President Myles Brand and get
things rolling for intercollegiate kickball.

But I don’t really see things progressing so quickly.

I guess the members of the 57 registered IM dodgeball squads
won’t get to live out the dream of being a varsity athlete on
campus. Which is a shame, because I’m sure Adidas could
design a backpack with a special pocket to display and protect each
player’s favorite foam ball.

Still, the lack of a varsity presence doesn’t mean UCLA
Recreation can’t step in and offer students refereed versions
of their favorite playground games.

I think most of us would appreciate a little variety in the
normal menu of IM basketball, football, soccer, volleyball,
softball and now dodgeball.

Logistically, very little would be required to support these
sports we remember so well: Most games we played back in the fourth
grade worked for us back then because of limited physical resources
that we had to overcome with basically infinite imagination.

It’s sad, because it’s almost as if we have the
opposite situation today, what with the whole gamut of resources
UCLA Recreation offers, thanks in part to our registration
fees.

All the while we’re stuck in the rut of convention with
sports played at one point in our lives only by the “big
kids.”

Who said growing up means leaving behind the simple things that
used to make life so much fun? That we have to run and lift weights
to keep in shape instead of playing with a big, round rubber
ball?

Why does maturity mean swimming has to be done in laps and not
to the single voice and otherwise silence of Marco Polo, or without
waterslides and Floaties?

Yet thanks to the reintroduction of dodgeball, I think
it’s clear that it’s OK to play kids’ games with
an adult body, regardless of how sore that body is the next
morning.

Looper wants to be a kid again ““ they don’t have
midterms. E-mail him with your ideas for new IM sports at
[email protected].