If you were hit, you were out, and the game ended when an entire team was eliminated. Creative gym teachers of the era mutated the game to increase the excitement and the welt potential. In one version, players who were hit stood beyond the back line on the opposite side to form a trap with their teammates, and if they put someone out they got to go back in. Some teachers distributed five balls at a time, and then heightened the complexity by creating a center zone in which both teams could roam. Yet the National Association for Sport and Physical Education is encouraging its 18,000 member teachers to no longer use the game.
Educators are also concerned that dodge ball lowers the self-esteem of certain kids.
This logic, however, conveniently ignores the likelihood that the less athletic kids who got bombed in dodge ball also will have less success actually keeping the beanbag on their heads, making them even bigger targets for ridicule. It is one thing to get lit up with a half-inflated synthetic volleyball thrown at mach 3 by Dirk Testosterone, it is entirely another to be unable to walk successfully. We are raising a generation of kids unable to deal with the slightest adversity, because they don't get enough practice. Most will get a whole truckload of failure when they start dating, of course, unless we carry this protective bent to extremes and insist on arranged marriages.