Dodgeball was a game that I picked up not on the playground but through my participation in the local Cub Scouts troop. Usually the scout experience is about the outdoor stuff, which is pivotal for the 3rd grade boy if he’s ever to get his butt off the couch and become a man. Good thing for me that I grew up in the days before video games were a kid’s first meal of the day.
Scouts is also about the experiencing life through constructive activities. Team building. Pitching tents. Responsibly starting, using and extinguishing camp fires. Arts and crafts and using a whittling knife. Plus, thanks to the scouts I learned how to tie knots and consequently complete the previously un-mastered art of tying my shoes.
You see, our Cub Scout “pack” had a reorganization that got about twelve of us 3rd graders from different schools in the same cohort. Part of the deal was a weekly Wednesday night meeting, a remodeled Scout Lodge, and a new leader, Mr Neumann. While my friend’s mom did a good job as Den Mother before, we needed to be whipped into shape.
When the first Wednesday came, we got our orientation from Mr Neumann about the structure and drill. It went like this:
1. The pledge of allegiance, and some formal stuff
2. An opening game
3. An outdoorsy activity, usually a about problem solving
4. Cleanup
Looking back it was like landing Bear Bryant as your coach plus use of the Superdome. I remember Mr Neumann as a tall, imposing guy, somewhat quiet and measured, and sort of a John Wayne type with an East Coast accent.
Now I wanted in for sure, even though I had contemplated quitting just like everything else I had ever joined.
Sports wise, dodgeball became our opening game from the second week on, settling on the sport because it just worked. And when you are indoors on a winter night, not too many other alternatives work unless you got a full gym, so it fit.
Sure, Scouts is about cooperation. And though dodgeball is a team sport that forces your team to mend and adapt quickly, you approach your opponent with vigor and cutthroat competition.
As one major newspaper put it, dodgeball is about "violence, exclusion and degradation". And maybe that was what I felt that made me, a fairly spastic 3rd grader already, snap one evening.
Despite where I might be now, I started out with no talent whatsoever in sport of any kind. I was a pretty gentile lad, idealistic maybe, and I thought that dodgeball was all teamwork and cooperation….not being pelted and knocked out as an early sacrificial lamb. I came to find out I was an easy score for the other team no matter who got the ball.
Week in week out of the first month of Cub Scouts, every game of dodgeball began with a whistle and grab for the ball at center, followed by me getting pelted and sent off. We played a couple of rounds every Wednesday night, but the result was always the same and my minutes on the court were more like seconds at most.
But Week 6 would mark a change though not in the way I thought. My intention that night was to start the dodgeball match with a rush toward center. I figured if I used my kid speed, I'd snatch the ball and defend myself before the first assault.
But by the time I got the ball in-hand, an opposing scout had wound up his throw, spotted me, and launched the ball right at me. Knocked on my butt, it took the ball clean out my hand and threw me back a few steps. The other 3rd graders laughed with a roar but I had had enough.
So I responded the way any other extremely frustrated 3rd grader would do. I had a verbal fit, threw out a few obscenities and grabbed the nearest chair, tossing it Bobby Knight style, right across the court.
And for a moment that stopped the laughs. “Hey!” yelled Mr Neumann, as I stormed out though the front door the of cabin, holding back the tears of frustration that I didn’t want anybody to see. Probably February, it was cold outside, and with the door slamming behind me Mr Neumann came out and I figured I would get sent home after getting my ass chewed out by the Scoutmaster.
Coach Bobby Knight, the pro, showing how you do it right.
But then a weird thing happened. Mr Neumann talked to me like an equal, giving me a chock full of empathy, acknowledging my frustrations and a bit of a pep talk.
No chewing out, no “you're going home, son”. Instead of being a military grade tyrant or a corny scout leader with silly anecdotes, Mr Neumann treated me like an equal.
He told me bit about keeping my cool. And that by keeping my cool I’d have more fun, plus that the other kids wouldn’t as easily poke and prod. “Sounds stupid”, he said, “but it works... Keep your cool.” It was the first time in my life that a man had talked to me like a coach. I was only 10 or 11 and had played sports before, but this was the first real coaching I ever got.
Strange thing about this pep talk stuff is that it ties in well with a favorite film, Dodgeball the movie. From Lance Armstrong's jibes about quitting to Rip Torn's anachronisms and dodgy advice, it seems that dodgeball brings out pep talk, perhaps by its ying/yang nature. And Mr Neumann's pep talk helped me and could have helped the Average Joes, the underdog team in that film.
I had heard recently that Mr Neumann had passed away after a bout with a long illness, and the news came right at the time I had thought about penning something about dodgeball. As usual, I had heard the news after the fact and maybe that made me a bit pensive.
Though I didn’t keep in touch or get to say goodbye, it was meaningful to remember that my first ever coach lived a good long life. And that my first coach showed up on the scene during one of my worst moments as a young athlete.
Andy Frye writes about sports and life here and also tweets several times daily via @MySportsComplex on Twitter.
After being buried in day-job work, writing about sports provides the mind and soul a nice vacation.
Writings © 2010. Pic of Coach Knight making love to his chair courtesy of USA Today
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