By Lauren Bishop
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Kelly Lynch, 18, of Covington plays dodgeball with others in a six-week adult session at Boone Woods park. Photo by JEFF SWINGER/The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dodgeball fever is catching.

The onetime gym class staple is back in new incarnations. And you can forget the white socks and angst over being chosen last for the team.

On June 15, the Game Show Network will premiere Extreme Dodgeball, which throws a few new twists into the game. Three days later, fans of the game will flock to theaters to see Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. Two young inventors have even christened a new cell phone networking service "Dodgeball."

The sport itself is being reclaimed by adults - Boone County Park District's current six-week session has adults from 18 to over 50.

"It's a fun way to stay active," says 27-year-old Jason Gamble of Florence, taking a break from warming up before a recent game.

"It reminds you of sixth grade," says fortysomething Florence resident Lauren Weston

Others have more sinister motives for playing.

"It's an excuse to legally beat my husband with a ball," says Shelley Herrmann, 33, of Elsmere.

On this particular evening, two better-known sports are being played at Boone Woods Park - an intense game of volleyball and a dignified doubles tennis match.

RULES OF THE GAME

How do you play dodgeball? In most versions, two teams face off, separated by a line of balls on the center line of a gym or court. The object is to throw balls at opposing team members to get them "out," but if someone catches a ball, the person who threw it is out. The last person standing wins. The National Amateur Dodgeball Association and the International Dodge-Ball Federation, each has its own rules. Visit www.dodgeballusa.com and www.dodge-ball.com. Where can I play locally? From 7-8 p.m. Tuesday nights at Boone Woods Park, 5876 Veterans Way, Burlington. A six-week session costs $7; the next session is scheduled to start June 29 . For more information, call (859) 334-2117 or visit Web site. Cincinnati Sports Leagues does not have its own dodgeball league but is looking into starting one, says president and co-founder Joff Moine. If you want to relive your childhood another way, you can start right now by joining the group's year-old kickball league. (513) 533-9386 or Web site. Can I start my own league? Look for instructions on the International Dodge-Ball Federation's Web site if you want to be part of that 7-year-old organization, which has official commissioners in 10 states (none yet in Ohio, Kentucky or Indiana). It's attempting to standardize the game's rules, courts and equipment. Lauren Bishop

ALL KINDS OF PLAYERS

If you google "dodgeball," the first site that comes up isn't about the game. It's a new social networking site similar to Friendster, except it operates through cell phones instead of your computer. Here's how it works. After you sign up (for free) on www.dodgeball.com and head out for a night on the town, you text message Dodgeball your location, and it text messages all your friends who have also signed up for the service to tell them were you are. It'll also tell you whether any friends of your friends are within 10 blocks, so you can meet up at a bar or club and discuss your shared love of Dodgeball (or anything else). The catch: Dodgeball isn't yet available in Cincinnati, only in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and eight other cities. Dodgeball.com founder Dennis Crowley says the site's creators don't yet have the next five cities picked out, but that they'll add Cincinnati to the list of the ones they're considering. So why the name Dodgeball? Crowley says when he and two friends were about to graduate from Syracuse University in 1998 and lose their e-mail accounts and Web space, they started searching for their own domain name. Wiffleball, Four Square and Kickball were taken, so they settled on Dodgeball. "The best part is, now that we're getting so much press, people are trying to find a connection between the name and the service - 'It's like dodgeball 'cause you get hit with messages, right?' " Crowley says. "We just nod and smile." Lauren Bishop

But as those games continue, park program assistant Liz McBee says go and two dozen adults start running across tennis courts 5 and 6, shouting and flinging red, rubber-coated foam balls at each other.

It's clear this group is having fun.

Paul Ankenbauer, program planner for the Boone County Parks, says he stole the dodgeball idea from the Schaumburg Park District, the Chicago-area headquarters of the National Amateur Dodgeball Association.

In July 2000, the Schaumburg Park District's first dodgeball tournament drew 33 youth and adult teams, and the adults said they didn't want to wait a year to play again, says Bill DePue, vice president of the National Amateur Dodgeball Association. Now the association runs seven tournaments every year, with players from as far away as New York and California.

"In the past year, it's just exploded," DePue says.

The same thing happened here: Boone County Parks offered adult dodgeball for the first time last summer, and players were so enthusiastic that they continued playing in indoor gyms through the winter, Ankenbauer says.

The park district uses the National Amateur Dodgeball Association's rule and its official balls - about the size of a volleyball and made of a softer foam, not hard rubber like those many of us remember from elementary school.

"I compare it to checkers," Ankenbauer says. "It's a simple game, but the more strategy you know, the better you are."

Fond memories of playing dodgeball as kids prompted 32-year-old Steve Fink and 29-year-old Neil Hamilton, co-workers at Bang Zoom Design, a Walnut Hills toy-inventing company, to start their own league at the end of 2002.

Their group of about 25 keeps things old-school by playing at the downtown YWCA with red rubber balls, which have caused more than a few injuries. Fink has sustained a fractured elbow and a broken pinkie, but Hamilton says most people have avoided injury.

"It's a safe way to get out aggression toward people, if you've had a rough work week," he says. "It's kind of mean-spirited, but in a fun way, not dangerous."

Dan Meyer, a 23-year-old University of Cincinnati senior who interned at Bang Zoom Design, says he didn't know what to expect when Fink and Hamilton invited him to play.

"My immediate reaction was, 'Are we still in third grade? Don't grown men play softball and drink beer?' "

Now, he's a convert. Not only is the game just as grueling a workout as the other competitive sports he plays, he says, it's more fun.

"When you see a guy running at you, gritting his teeth, about to throw a big bouncy ball, it's just funny," he says.

The league is taking a break for the summer but plans to start up again in the fall, maybe even with uniforms. Right now, they're basking in the fact that they were ahead of the dodgeball curve.

"We think we're pioneers in the sport of dodgeball," Fink says. "At first we thought we were all going to be the biggest geeks, but now it seems like we're cool."

E-mail lbishop@enquirer.com