Artful dodgers
Yes folks, Canada has national dodgeball teams, and they are headed to the world championships
Jason Mergler is standing between two plastic cones while teammates hurl foam balls at him at speeds clocking more than 100 km/h.
And he’s grinning the whole time. The 24-year-old, a star player on Canada’s national dodgeball team, is in his element.
“I feel comfortable there,” he says of that particular drill during one of the team’s final practices before they fly to Australia for the dodgeball world championships Oct. 19-22 in Melbourne, Australia.
“I like getting in that zone, getting the adrenaline going, and it’s easier for me to see the balls.”
Dodgeball might be the only sport where being hit repeatedly is training and not punishment. But as much as Mergler likes jumping, diving, sliding sideways on his knees or any other body contorting move that makes his six-foot-two frame disappear from the incoming ball’s trajectory, it’s actually the throwing of the ball that drew him to the sport.
“Throwing a ball at someone is a hell of a lot of fun,” he says, summing up the simple game kids learn to love or hate in elementary school, depending how likely they are to be the last kid standing or the first out.
“It’s always exciting to be a part of something that is not mainstream, but there are struggles with that.”
VICTOR GRAVILI DODGEBALL COACH
When the college student from Toronto tells people he’s on the national dodgeball team he typically gets two responses — “What?” and “Cool!”
Most people don’t expect to hear Canada has a national dodgeball team. It’s long been an elementary school game or a way to fill time in gym class, but dodgeball is relatively new as a high-level competitive sport.
Mergler and his teammates proudly wear the Maple Leaf on their jerseys, but dodgeball isn’t recognized as a sport by Sport Canada. As a result, they have to fundraise or pay out of their own pocket for everything from uniforms to their trip to Melbourne.
“It’s always exciting to be a part of something that is not mainstream, but there are struggles with that as well,” says Victor Gravili, coach of Canada’s national men’s and women’s teams.
“I’d love to have the funding to incorporate more practices and more training time. (But) year over year, it’s getting easier.”
This year, they are preparing for the worlds with practices in the Humber college gymnasium, which is a real step up from the facility they had to use last year with artificial turf (think turf burn).
What isn’t getting easier for the players is the competition, nationally or globally.
This year, more than 160 players turned up at camps across the country looking to make the eight member men’s and women’s teams. Most of the 2016 national team players hail from Ontario, where the sport’s depth is greatest, with a couple from as far away as British Columbia and Nova Scotia.
Canada is often an early adopter of a new sport and surges to the top of the global rankings but then struggles to stay there once the rest of the world jumps onboard, and that’s been the case with dodgeball.
The men finished second at the inaugural world championships in 2012 and won gold at the next two before dropping to bronze last year. On the women’s side, they won gold in 2012 and 2013 before dropping out of the medals at the past two world championships.
“The world stage has gotten more difficult, which has made us (realize) we need to come in with a more robust and comprehensive training program,” Gravili says.
Team training is similar to other sports, with drills to develop skills and work on specific game-day strategies and a scrimmage to practice everything in the heat of the action.
Dodgeball looks chaotic, with six balls flying back and forth between the two teams, who start with six players apiece on a standard volleyball court.
But veteran players say it requires a great deal of patience and strategy to know when and where to throw the ball.
Throughout the two-hour training session, Mergler is intensely focused and has a seemingly endless variety of ways to communicate plays to his teammates — a ball held to his mouth, a cupped hand or jersey pulled up to his nose, not giving his opponents the chance to lip read, much like a baseball pitcher and catcher speaking into their gloves during a conference on the mound.
Dodgeball is still an emerging sport and hasn’t sorted itself out yet; there’s little standardization among countries and leagues when it comes to rules or style of ball. There are two international governing bodies trying to push the sport forward in different ways, but the ultimate goal is to get the sport into the Olympics.
Canada is a member of the smaller World Dodgeball Federation, which is holding its fifth championships with a range of teams primarily from North America and Asia.
But Canada is not yet a member of the larger World Dodgeball Association, which held its inaugural World Cup this past April. The WDA says it represents 67 million players worldwide and is working to gain sport recognition with the International Olympic Committee.
“We’re well aware there’s a bit of a turf war going on between these two groups,” said Dodgeball Canada president Duane Wysynski.
Canada, a natural diplomat even in a sport in which you fire a ball at your opponent as fast as you can, is set to host next year’s federation championships and plans to invite association members.
“We’re looking to be as inclusive as possible because we think the game needs it,” Wysynski said.
Jessica O’Quinn, a competitive softball player since she was five years old, was recruited into dodgeball three years ago because of her throwing arm.
She didn’t take it seriously at first, and the 25-year-old legal assistant still doesn’t take it quiet as seriously as others do.
“I always say it’s just dodgeball, it’s not a big deal, but I guess it is now,” she says.
“It’s always going to be a big honour to win on behalf of your country and stand on the podium and be better at that time than everyone else.”