|
Back to Table of Contents
More pictures from the Dodgeball tournament
Humiliation! Violence! Community?
Banned from gym classes, dodgeball resurfaces in priestly formation
by Dan Madden
It is in the “Physical Education Hall of Shame.” It has been banned from school gym classes across the country. It has been condemned by national teachers’ groups as a game that “encourages the strong to pick on the weak.”
It is also an excellent way to strengthen the bonds of Christian community among seminarians.
Seniors Jarrod Thome and Andy Sheller demonstrate the coordinated assault
tactic that won their Entrepeneurs the inaugural Conception Seminary College dodgeball crown.
On one magical night in February, more than 50 seminarians gathered in the St. Michael Hall gymnasium for the frenzied and often criticized tradition that has thrilled and terrorized generations of school children – dodgeball.
Critics might claim that a sport also known as “murderball,” “warball,” or “bombardment” flies in the face of Gospel values. And shouldn’t a young man preparing to minister to the least of his brothers be discouraged from glorying in the humiliation of fellow seminarians?
Father Dan Merz, a seminary chaplain and professor, said that to understand dodgeball’s role in priestly formation one has to gain a clearer understanding of the seminary culture.
“The seminary is not like your typical educational institution,” he explained. “We revel in humiliation.”
And regardless of its merits, as one visibly agitated underclassman noted, “It feels really, really good.”
With a twitch developing in his right eye, he added, “I just wish Father Isaac had played. A D+ on my Realism paper? He said my arguments were off target. I’ll show him how ‘on target’ I can be. He thinks he knows so much. Well, he doesn’t.”
Father Isaac did not respond to interview requests, but through a spokesman stated that, yes, he actually does “know so much,” and denied that he ever said, “a D+ in my class is like a B+ in other classes.”
Unconvinced by his denial, a group of faculty members is currently petitioning Father Isaac to participate in next year’s tournament.
***
With winter coming on, Dean of Students Father Samuel Russell realized that the community spirit of the largest student body in more than three decades might be strained by unusual circumstances. Renovation of St. Maur Hall, the main seminary building, left seminarians without their student union and forced them to cram into parlors, offices and dining rooms for classes. The makeshift student union was relegated to a hallway outside the Abbey kitchen where conversation competed with the racket of dishwashers. Father Samuel asked student leaders to come up with creative ways to ease tensions and foster the sense of community that is central to Conception’s formation program. He envisioned activities that would promote self-esteem, kindness and non-aggressive interaction.
***
In 2000 Dr. Neil Williams, head of the physical education department at Eastern Connecticut University, consigned dodgeball to the “Physical Education Hall of Shame,” along with other tribal rituals such as Red Rover, Musical Chairs and Duck, Duck, Goose.
A half century earlier, dodgeball legend Patches O’Houlihan boasted that dodgeball is a sport of violence, exclusion and degradation.
“When you’re picking players in gym class,” he told the youth of America, “remember to pick the bigger, stronger kids for your team. That way you can all gang up on the weaker ones.”
O’Houlihan traced the history of dodgeball to an opium den in 14th century China, noting that the sport’s creators “threw severed heads at each other instead of the ADAA (American Dodgeball Association of America) sanctioned balls that we use today.”
Editor’s Note: Patches O’Houlihan is not a real person. He’s a character in the 2004 movie “DodgeBall,” which the author of this article obviously took a little too seriously. The editors of Tower Topics regret any confusion, and further apologize for the author’s inappropriate and culturally insensitive description of Chinese opium addicts hurling severed heads at each other.
***
In a moment of inspiration that bordered on the divine, seminarian Joe Chrisman approached student leaders with an idea that would exceed Father Samuel’s hopes and dreams – a seminary-wide dodgeball tournament.
After submitting to a standing ovation and rejecting a unanimous recall vote by the council to appoint him grand dictator of the student body, Chrisman meekly replied, “I am but a simple man. I just want to throw a ball at someone’s head.”
“It was a perfect idea,” said athletic committee head James “the Pogo Stick” Uhlenhake, who by tournament’s end would be embroiled in controversy. “You don’t need much skill, so pretty much anyone can play it. And you get to hit people with balls.”
“Dodgeball is one of those things that everybody enjoys,” said Novice Anselm Broom, a member of “Breaking Habits,” a team of novices and young monks. “We all have memories of how fun and how stupid and how kind of scary it was. Who hasn’t been a sixth-grader going up against a 200-pound eighth-grader?”
The tournament resulted from Chrisman’s warm memories of a special gym teacher.
“Through him, I came to understand that dodgeball is a metaphor for life,” Chrisman recalled. “He taught me that to excel in either one I would need to have courage, passion and a high threshold for pain.
If he could have gotten away with it, he would have let us play dodgeball with rocks!”
Chrisman still remembers vividly the day that he fell in love with the sport.
“I was in seventh grade at the time,” he said, “and I hit this kid right in the face and broke his glasses. Head shots were legal then, so he was out.”
A short time later, the boy returned to the game.
“About five seconds later I drilled him even harder in the exact same place,” Chrisman said, a nostalgic grin on his face. “He took off after me, trying to beat me up. They had to stop the game, and I think I ended up running away.”
***
As the day of the tournament approached, murmurs of trash talk could be heard in the halls, and memories of gym classes gone by were as pungent as sweaty gym socks left in a locker for 37 days: the synthetic pinging sound of a bouncing rubber ball … the sweet release of a perfect throw … the embarrassment of being knocked out by a girl … the cold glee of taking out Jeff Brown after he unsnapped your Western-style shirt in front of all the eighth-grade girls at lunch … the bitter taste of fear in your mouth after the 13-year-old bully with facial hair declared you “dead meat” … the glory of claiming the four-inch plastic trophy (imported all the way from Taiwan) for winning the fifth-grade dodgeball tournament …
Editor’s Note: We apologize to Mr. Jeff Brown, to the misunderstood young man with premature facial hair, and to all women for the author’s editorial comments. We also regret, and are frankly quite embarrassed by, the author’s obvious – and sad – exaggeration of his own dodgeball skills. He has agreed to attend anger management classes and gender sensitivity training.
***
Tournament day: Eight teams toed the line before a raucous crowd to await the referee’s whistle. They were the Flying Hodags, the Nads, Class Day Attire, the Ligers (a cross between a lion and a tiger), the Red Dragons, Breaking Habits, the Hissing Asps and the Entrepreneurs. Each team made its own flag and uniforms, ranging in sophistication from duct tape numbers on blank T-shirts, to intricate Sharpie-marker artwork.
The flag of the champions (tournament officials are investigating accusations
that Father "X-Factor" Nacke violated ADAA requlations with his
pre-tournament pep talk).
The Entrepeneurs, captained by the confident (i.e., cocky) senior Andy Sheller, would go on to win the tournament thanks to a sophisticated strategy. They broke down the skills and athleticism of each opposing player and ranked them. This “hierarchy” as they called it, determined the order in which they would eliminate opposing players.
A series of code words determined the course of action they would take in any given situation.
When asked about the Entrepreneurs’ elaborate strategy, one admiring opponent said, “What a bunch of dorks!”
One of the surprises of the tournament was the play of the Flying Hodags’ Byron Bergkamp, a slightly built junior who had not distinguished himself on the field of athletic competition. In a moment for the ages, the Flying Hodags, down three players to one to Class Day Attire, called a timeout. The team immediately asked Bergkamp to substitute into the game to salvage their hopes.
Bergkamp, or “The Baller” as he now calls himself, had turned heads with some acrobatic catches earlier in the tournament, but he admits that at the time he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of entering the game alone.
“I guess my teammates had more confidence in me than I had in myself,” he said.
In dodgeball, if a player catches a ball, one of his teammates who has been eliminated is allowed to reenter the game and the opponent who threw the ball is eliminated. Two Bergkamp catches later the Flying Hodags had regained the advantage and were cruising toward victory.
While much has been made of a small, unathletic seminarian from Wichita bursting onto the dodgeball scene from nowhere, Bergka ... uh .... “The Baller” bristles at the “myth” that he isn’t athletic.
“I am,” he insisted. “Really, I am! Stop smiling at me like that, and don’t pat me on the head! Stop it!”
***
The tournament was not all beauty and grace. While there has been no official comment from seminary or Vatican officials, an incident between seminarian James Uhlenhake and his chaplain, Father Dan Merz, can only be described as ugly.
Hints of trouble emerged in a pre-tournament press conference when Father Merz commented, “James is a good athlete, but sometimes he’s a vocal athlete. I guess it wouldn’t break my heart if somebody shut him up.” Sources close to Father Merz admit that the ill-advised and thinly veiled threat resulted from the priest’s strange paranoia that all of the students are “out to get” him.
“The pressure of being the only faculty member playing in the tournament is getting to him,” said close friend Chris Brite. “He’s a basket case.”
However, from the first game it became apparent that Father Merz’s fears weren’t completely unfounded. He became a favorite target of opposing players, and it was rumored that even a few of his own teammates would have liked to nail him.
Father Merz may have invited some of the animosity. Upon being drafted in the first round by the Flying Hodags, he underwent a transformation, referring to himself as “Murderin’ Dan Merz,” and wearing a jersey inscribed with the words, “I punch puppies for fun.”
The priest, whose role as a chaplain is to help the seminarian on his journey toward a fuller relationship with Christ, shocked spectators with an especially vicious and amazingly accurate throw that left Uhlenhake, who was midway through his signature “pogo” evasive maneuver, doubled over with the undignified pain that every male has experienced.
“I don’t know why he had to do that,” a shaken Uhlenhake said later. “Did it make him feel better about himself? I guess maybe he was showing off; he did have guests there watching.”
When told of Uhlenhake’s remarks, Father Merz responded with a smile, “I felt pretty good about myself coming in, but I have to admit, my encounter with James was a highlight.”
There may have been hidden motives for Father Merz’s actions, though. Moments later he was overheard cackling, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord! But I am his instrument!”
While many were quick to criticize Father Merz, tournament founder Chrisman chose to see the incident as an example of the healing power of dodgeball.
“There has always been an unspoken tension between James and Father Dan. It just seemed to blossom during that game,” he said. “As I understand it, Father Dan reminds James of some math teacher he had when he was a child, and James has never been able to pass a math class. Perhaps this will be a way they can work these issues out ... Oh, who am I fooling? I’m with Father Dan on this one. Uhlenhake had it coming.”
We welcome your comments:
communications@conception.edu
www.conceptionabbey.org
Back to Table of Contents
More pictures from the Dodgeball tournament
|
