What I Learned Watching My 3rd Grader’s Lower School Dodgeball Tournament
The whistle shrills before I finish peeling the wax paper off my orange popsicle, and Leo’s already walking off the court. Twelve seconds into his first ever lower school dodgeball tournament, he’d taken a throw to the shoulder and was out. I waved from the sticky bleachers by the cinder block wall, and he gave me that tight half-smile he uses when he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s embarrassed, then went to sit on the bench with the rest of the alternates.
I’d known this wasn’t going to be a highlight reel moment. Leo, 8, has always hated competitive games. He’d rather draw maps of our neighborhood during recess than join any game that keeps score. His classroom teacher suggested he join the tournament waitlist back in February, saying he’d been slowly working up to joining group activities this semester, and a low-stakes tournament would be good practice. When a kid came down with a fever the night before, Leo got the call up. He said yes, even though I could see his hands twist into knots in his hoodie pockets when he told me.
By the third round, Leo’s team had worked through most of their players, and the coach sent him back in. It was down to five on five, and within a minute, it was just Leo and one 4th grader on his team against three 4th graders on the other side. The 4th grader got out 10 seconds later, and suddenly the whole gym was quiet for a beat before the parents started yelling “throw it, Leo!”
He stood there, the red rubber dodgeball clutched to his chest, and didn’t move. I’d forgotten for a minute: back in October, he’d thrown a dodgeball at recess and hit another kid straight in the nose. The kid cried, went to the nurse, and Leo came home that day saying he never wanted to hit anyone with a ball ever again. I told him it was an accident, that it happens, but he just shook his head and wouldn’t talk about it again.
After 30 seconds of standing there, Leo bent down, set the ball on the gym floor, and walked off the court.
A few parents shifted on the bleachers. I heard one mom behind me murmur that he’d quit on his team. The coach just clapped him on the back and pointed him to the bench, no lecture, no fuss.
When the round ended, I walked over to the bleachers where he was sitting, picking at a loose thread on his sweatpants and working on a blue popsicle the PTA was selling. I almost opened with the generic “great effort” line I’d been taught to say, but it felt hollow. Instead I sat down next to him and said, “That looked really uncomfortable out there.”
He nodded, and said, “I didn’t want to hit any of them. If I got one of them out in front of everyone, they’d feel bad. I didn’t care if we lost anyway.”
That’s when I realized I’d been approaching the whole thing wrong. I’d spent the whole tournament thinking about how he needed to practice grit, how he needed to be a good team player, how he needed to get comfortable being in the spotlight. I hadn’t stopped to think that he was already acting on something that mattered more to him than any of that: he’d made a promise to himself not to hurt anyone, and he kept it.
Later that day, I talked to the PE teacher, Ms. Lopez, who runs the tournament every year. She told me she sees this at least three times a year, kids who don’t want to hit other people, or who get overwhelmed by the noise and the crowds. She’s made a few small changes over the years that make a big difference, none of which require scrapping the tournament or handing out unearned trophies just for showing up.
First, she does a one-minute check-in with every kid before the tournament starts. She asks, “Do you want to go all out for the win today, or do you just want to run around and have fun?” If a kid says they don’t want to hit anyone, she tells them about the alternate rule: you can get a player out by hitting the wall within a foot of them, no contact needed. She lets kids opt to be ball retrievers between rounds if they want a break from playing, no questions asked. It takes her 10 extra minutes before the tournament, and it means almost every kid participates in some way, instead of sitting on the bench miserable the whole time.
For parents, she had a simple tip that I’ve already started using: when your kid does something that looks like quitting or failing from the outside, don’t lead with criticism or empty encouragement. Lead with “that looked hard. What was that like for you?” It gives them space to tell you what’s actually going on, instead of them guessing what you want to hear.
Leo’s team ended up taking third place that day, and they all got little branded keychains from the PTA. Leo gave his to the boy who’d played every round, said he didn’t need it. Last week, he came home from school and said he played dodgeball at recess, used the wall rule, got two kids out, and had fun. He still says he doesn’t want to hit anyone with a ball, and that’s fine with me.
I still catch myself sometimes, when he’s nervous about a quiz or a game, leaning into that old instinct to tell him to just push through, try harder, don’t quit. Now I pause first, and ask what he’s feeling, what he cares about more. We haven’t figured everything out, and there will be times when he has to do hard things he doesn’t want to do. But for now, I’d rather he learn to stick to what he believes is right than win a dodgeball tournament.
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